Special educational needs, inclusion and diversity Second edition
Special educational needs, inclusion and diversity Second edition Norah Frederickson and Tony Cline
Open University Press McGraw-Hill Education McGraw-Hill House Shoppenhangers Road Maidenhead Berkshire England SL6 2QL email:
[email protected] world wide web: www.openup.co.uk and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121–2289, USA Copyright © Norah Frederickson and Tony Cline 2009 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS. A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978-033-5221462 (pb) ISBN-10: 0-33-5221467 (pb) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in the UK by Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow Fictitious names of companies, products, people, characters, and/or data that may be used herein (in case studies or in examples) are not intended to represent any real individual, company, product or event.
Contents
Acknowledgements PART ONE
vii 1
Principles and concepts
1 Special educational needs, inclusion and diversity: an integrated approach
3
2 Stakeholders in special educational needs and inclusion
13
3 Concepts of special educational needs
32
4 Inclusion
68
5 Special educational needs: developmental frameworks PART TWO
102 125
Assessment in context
6 Identification and assessment
127
7 Bias and equity in assessment
146
8 Assessment for learning
165
9 Learning environments
192
PART THREE
237
Areas of need
10 Language
239
11 Autistic spectrum disorders
273
12 Learning difficulties
306
13 Literacy
340
14 Mathematics
379
15 Behavioural, emotional and social difficulties
407
16 Promoting emotional and social competence and well-being
454
17 Sensory needs
496
vi
Contents 18 Physical needs
526
References
543
Index
621
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our thanks to Professor John Morton and Professor Uta Frith for their very helpful comments on an early draft of the version of Chapter 5 that was in the first edition. The two cases featured in Activity 17.4 were taken from an advanced course which was run at University College London. The accounts were written by Ann Robson, and we are grateful for her permission to use them here. We would also like to express our thanks to Jane Lang for her excellent support during the preparation of the second edition of this book. Finally, we wish to thank the many colleagues and students who have challenged and stimulated us to keep updating our thinking and knowledge in this field. Sections of the following chapters were adapted from earlier publications by the authors. We are grateful to the publishers and journal editors who have graciously given permission to use this material. Publishers and details of the original publications are as follows. Chapter 7: Cline, T. (1998) The assessment of special educational needs for bilingual children. British Journal of Special Education, 25(4): 159–63; Cline, T. and Shamsi, T. (2000) Language Needs or Special Needs? The Assessment of Learning Difficulties in Literacy among Children Learning English as an Additional Language: A Literature Review (Research Report RR184). London: DfEE. Authorized under individual licence from HMSO (no. C02 W0000128). Chapter 8: Cline, T. and Frederickson, N. (eds) (1996) Curriculum Related Assessment – Cummins and Bilingual Children. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Chapter 9: Frederickson, N. and Cline, T. (eds) (1995) Assessing the Learning Environments of Children with Special Educational Needs. London: Educational Psychology Publishing; Frederickson, N. (1990) Introduction to soft systems methodology and its application in work with schools, in N. Frederickson (ed.) Soft Systems Methodology: Practical Approaches in Work with Schools. London: Educational Psychology Publishing. Chapter 10: Cline, T. and Frederickson, N. (eds) (1991) Bilingual Pupils and the National Curriculum: Overcoming Difficulties in Teaching and Learning. London: University College London, Department of Psychology. Chapter 13: Cline, T. and Frederickson, N. (1999) Identification and assessment of dyslexia in bi/multi-lingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2(2): 81–93. Publisher: Multilingual Matters. Cline, T. and Shamsi, T. (2000) Language Needs or Special Needs? The Assessment of Learning Difficulties in Literacy among Children Learning English as an Additional Language: A Literature Review (Research Report RR184). London: DfEE. Authorized under individual licence from HMSO (no. C02 W0000128).
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Acknowledgements Chapter 16: Frederickson, N. (1991) Children can be so cruel – helping the rejected child, in G. Lindsay and A. Miller (eds) Psychological Services for Primary Schools. London: Longman (Pearson Education). Chapter 17: Cline, T. (1997) Educating for bilingualism in different contexts: teaching the deaf and teaching children with English as an additional language. Educational Review, 49(2): 145–52. Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd. www.tandf.co.uk/journals. Permission was also granted for reproduction of the following tables and figures. Figure 2.1: Chrispeels, J. (1996) Effective schools and home-school-community partnership roles: A framework for parent involvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 7(4): 297–323. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals). Table 4.2: Baker, E.T., Wang, M.C. and Walberg, H.J. (1994–1995) The effects of inclusion on learning. Educational Leadership, 52(4): 33–5. Copyright 2007 by ASCD (www.ascd.org). Used with permission. Figure 4.4: Mastropieri, M.A., Leinart, A., & Scruggs, T.E. (1999). Strategies to increase reading fluency. Intervention in School and Clinic, 34(5), 278–83. Reproduced with permission of Sage Publications Inc. Figure 4.5: Mathes, P.G., Fuchs, D., Fuchs, L.S., Henley, A.M., & Saunders, A. (1994). Increasing strategic reading practice with Peabody classwide peer tutoring. Learning Disabilities Research in Practice, 9(1), 44–8. Reproduced with permission of Blackwell Publishing. Table 5.1: Sharman, C., Cross, W. & Vennis, D. (2007) Observing Children and Young People, 4th edition. London: Continuum. By kind permission of Continuum International Publishing Group. Figure 5.1: Frith, U. (1997) Brain, mind and behaviour in dyslexia, in C. Hulme and M. Snowling (ed.) Dyslexia: Biology, Cognition and Intervention. London: Whurr, with acknowledgement to the British Dyslexia Association. Figures 5.2 and 5.3: Frith, U. (1995) Dyslexia: can we have a shared theoretical framework? Educational and Child Psychology, 12(1): 6–17, with acknowledgement to the British Psychological Society. Figure 5.4: Frederickson, N. and Cameron, R.J. (1999) Psychology in Education Portfolio. Psychology in Education: Assessment in Practice. © nferNelson, 1999. All rights reserved. Table 5.4: Cline, T. and Baldwin, S. (1994) Selective Mutism in Childhood. London: Whurr, with acknowledgement to the British Dyslexia Association. Figure 5.5: Rutter, M. (1989) Pathways from childhood to adult life. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 30: 23–51. Publisher: Cambridge University Press. Table 6.1: Glover, T.A. & Albers, C.A. (2007). Considerations for evaluating universal screening assessments. Journal of School Psychology, 45(2), 117–35. With permission from Elsevier.
Acknowledgements
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Table 7.2: Reynolds, C.R. (1980) Differential construct validity of intelligence as popularly measured: correlation of age with raw scores on the WISC-R for blacks, whites, males and females. Intelligence, 4(4): 371–80. Publisher: Elsevier Science. Table 8.1: Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1998) Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, 5(1): 7–74. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http:// www.informaworld.com). Table 8.2: Wiliam, D., Lee, C., Harrison, C. & Black, P.J. (2004). Teachers developing assessment for learning: impact on student achievement. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, 11(1), 49–65. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.informaworld.com). Table 8.3: Gavine, D., Auchterlonie, L., & Godson, J. (2006). ‘Assessment for learning’ and its relevance to educational psychology. Educational and Child Psychology, 23(3), 99–108. Reproduced with permission from Education and Child Psychology, © The British Psychological Society. Figure 8.4: Deno, S.L. and Fuchs, L.S. (1987) Developing curriculum based measurement systems for data-based special education problem solving. Focus on Exceptional Children, 19(8): 1–16. Publisher: Love Publishing Company. Figures 8.6, 8.7 and 8.8: Rogers, U. and Pratten, A. (1996) The Cummins framework as a decision making aid for special education professionals working with bilingual children, in T. Cline and N. Frederickson (eds) Curriculum Related Assessment – Cummins and Bilingual Children. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Figures 9.2 and 9.3: Design Council (2005). Learning Environments Campaign Prospectus: From the Inside Looking Out. London: The Design Council. Reproduced with permission, www.designcouncil.org.uk. Figure 9.4: Knoff, H.M. (1984) The practice of multi-modal consultation: an integrating approach for consultation service delivery. Psychology in the Schools, 21: 83–91. Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Table 9.2: Woolner, P., Hall, E., Higgins, S., McCaughey, C. & Wall, K. (2007). Assigned foundation? What we know about the impact of environments on learning and the implications for Building Schools for the Future. Oxford Review of Education, 33(1), 47–70. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.informaworld.com). Table 9.3: Waxman, H.C. (1995) Classroom observations of effective teaching, in A.C. Ornstein (ed.) Teaching: Theory into Practice. Published by Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA. Copyright © 1995 by Pearson Education. Adapted by permission of the publisher. Table 9.4: Ruiz, N.T. (1995) The social construction of ability and disability: II. Optimal and at-risk lessons in a bilingual special education classroom. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 28(8): 491–502. Reproduced with permission of Sage Publications Inc. Figure 9.8: Checkland, P.B. and Scholes, J. (1990) Soft Systems Methodology in Action. Copyright John Wiley & Sons, Limited. Reproduced with permission.
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Acknowledgements Figure 9.9: Bettle, S., Frederickson, N. and Sharp, S. (2001) Supporting schools in special measures: the contribution of educational psychology. Educational Psychology in Practice, 17(1): 53–68. Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd., PO Box 25, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 3UE (http://www.informaworld.com). Figure 10.1: Crystal, D. and Varley, R. (1998) Introduction to Language Pathology, 4th edn. London: Whurr. Figures 10.2 and 10.3: Bishop, D.V.M. (1997) Uncommon Understanding: Development and Disorders of Language Comprehension in Children. Hove: Psychology Press (International Thompson Publishing Services Limited). Table 10.2: Baker, C. (1996) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2nd edn. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Activity 10.2: Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1981) Bilingualism or Not: The Education of Minorities. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Figure 10.6: Lees, J. and Urwin, S. (1997) Children with Language Disorders, 2nd edn. London: Whurr. Table 10.5: Cline, T. (1997) Special educational needs and language proficiency, in C. Leung and C. Cable (ed.) English as an Additional Language: Changing Perspectives (pp. 53–64). Watford, Hertfordshire: National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum. Figure 11.3: Framework used in Circle of Friends for thinking about different relationships with people in our lives. Reproduced by kind permission of Jane Turner, Buckinghamshire Educational Psychology Service. Figure 11.4: Toplis, R., & Hadwin, J. (2006). Using Social Stories to change problematic lunchtime behaviour in school. Educational Psychology in Practice, 22, 53–67. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http:// www.informaworld.com). Figure 11.5: Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice (2006). Problem Behavior Pathway. Cecp.air.org/fba/problembehavior2/appendixg.htm. Reproduced with the permission of the Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice. Figure 12.2: Riding, R.J. and Rayner, S. (1998) Cognitive Styles and Learning Strategies. London: David Fulton. Table 12.2: Tomlinson, S. (1988) Why Johnny can’t read: critical theory and special education. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 3(1): 45–58. Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd., PO Box 25, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 3UE (http://www.informaworld.com). Table 12.3: Molteno, C., Roux, A., Nelson, M. and Arens, L. (1990) Causes of mental handicap in Cape Town. South African Medical Journal, 77: 98–101, with acknowledgement to the South African Medical Association. Table 12.5: Jensen, M. (2003). Mediating knowledge construction. Educational and Child Psychology, 20(2), 100–42. Reproduced with permission from Education and Child Psychology, © The British Psychological Society.
Acknowledgements
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Table 12.6: Campione, J.C. (1989) Assisted assessment: a taxonomy of approaches and an outline of strengths and weaknesses. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22(3): 151–65. Reproduced with permission of Sage Publications Inc. Figures 13.4, 13.6 and 13.7: British Psychological Society (BPS) (1999) Dyslexia, Literacy and Psychological Assessment. Leicester: British Psychological Society. Table 13.4: Gregory, E. (1994) Cultural assumptions and early years’ pedagogy: the effect of the home culture on minority children’s interpretation of reading in school. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 7(2): 111–24, with acknowledgement to the Linguistics Institute of Ireland. Figure 13.5: Goswami, U. (2006). Neuroscience and education: from research to practice? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7, 406–13. Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Figure 13.9: Palinscar, A.S. (1986) The role of dialogue in providing scaffolded instruction. Educational Psychologist, 21(1–2): 73–98. Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd., PO Box 25, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 3UE (http:// www.informaworld.com). Table 14.1: Merttens, R. (1999) Family numeracy, in I. Thompson (ed.) Issues in Teaching Numeracy in Primary Schools. Buckingham: Open University Press. Table 14.2: Shuard, H. and Rothery, R. (1984) Children Reading Mathematics. London: John Murray. Reproduced by permission of John Murray (Publishers) Ltd. Activity 14.4: ‘Maths phobia’ from the University of Hull Study Advice website, http://www.hull.ac.uk/studyadvice/Mathsresources/Mathsphobia.doc. Reproduced with the permission of the University of Hull. Activity 14.5: Nunes, T. (2004) Teaching Mathematics to Deaf Children. London: Whurr Publishers. Copyright John Wiley & Sons, Limited. Reproduced with permission. Table 15.2: DuPaul, G.J. & Weyandt, L.L. (2006). School based intervention for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Effects on academic, social and behavioural functioning. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 53(2), 161–76. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.informaworld.com). Figure 15.5: British Psychological Society (BPS) (1996) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A Psychological Response to an Evolving Concept. (Report of a Working Party of the British Psychological Society). Leicester: British Psychological Society. Table 16.1: Caldarella, P. and Merrell, K.W. (1997) Common dimensions of social skills of children and adolescents: A taxonomy of positive behaviours. School Psychology Review, 26(2): 264–78. Copyright 1997 by the National Association of School Psychologists, Bethesda, MD. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. www.nasponline.org.
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Acknowledgements Figure 16.3: Konu, A.I. & Rimpelä, M.K. (2002). Well-being in schools: a conceptual modal. Health Promotion International 17(1), 79–87. By permission of Oxford University Press. Figure 16.4: Dodge, K.A., Pettit, C.S., McClasky, C.J. and Brown, M.M. (1986) Social competence in children. Society for Research in Child Development Monograph, No. 213, Blackwell Publishers. Figure 16.5: Salovey, P. and Sluyter, D.J. (1997) Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, a member of Perseus Books Group. Figure 16.6: Lemerise, E.A. & Arsenio, W.F. (2000). An integrated model of emotion processing and cognition in social information processing. Child Development, 71(1), 107–18. Reproduced with permission of Blackwell Publishing. Figure 16.8: Frederickson, N. and Graham, B. (1999) Social skills and emotional intelligence, in N. Frederickson and R.J. Cameron. (1999) Psychology in Education Portfolio. Windsor: NFER-Nelson. Figure 16.10: Webster-Stratton, C., & Hancock, L. (1998). Parent training: Content, methods and processes. In E. Schaefer (Ed.), Handbook of Parent Training, 2nd edition (pp. 98–152). Copyright John Wiley & Sons, Limited. Reproduced with permission. Figure 16.11: Oden, S. (1986) A child’s social isolation: origins, prevention, intervention, in G. Cartledge and J.F. Milburn (eds) Teaching Social Skills to Children. Oxford: Pergamon Press (Pearson Education). Figure 17.1: Ridley, J. (1991) The structure of the ear and the hearing system. Education Guardian, 25 June 1991: 10, with permission from Guardian Newspapers Ltd. Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 1991. Figure 17.2: Watson, L. (1996) Hearing Impairment. Tamworth, Staffordshire: NASEN, with permission from the author and NASEN. Figure 17.4: Thompson, R.F. (2000). The Brain: A Neuroscience Primer. Third edition © 1985, 1993, 2000 by Worth Publishers. Used with permission. Figure 18.3: Cairney, J., Hay, J.A., Faught, B.E. Wade, T.J., Corna, L. & Flouris, A. (2005). Developmental coordination disorder, generalized self-efficacy toward physical activity, and participation in organized and free play activities. Journal of Pediatrics, 147: 515–20. With permission from Elsevier.
PART ONE Principles and concepts
1 Special educational needs, inclusion and diversity: an integrated approach
Objectives When you have studied this chapter you should:
• •
be able to explain the implications of describing special educational needs as one aspect of social and cultural diversity; be familiar with the way in which this book is structured and the main themes running through it.
Contents Diversity in society
• •
A changing society Key concepts in charting diversity
An integrated approach
• •
SEN and educational provision Theoretical approaches to SEN
The structure of this book
Diversity in society A changing society We have written this book because almost all the books that we read about special educational needs (SEN) and inclusion did not seem to us to reflect adequately the rapidly changing, increasingly diverse nature of the society we live in. What was once a relatively homogeneous and stable population has been transformed. Every aspect of society that affects the treatment of disabilities and learning difficulties has changed radically and continues to evolve – the cultural, ethnic and religious profile, patterns of family organization, economic and occupational structures, the relative status of men and women, and the perception of human rights and social responsibilities. We will illustrate the pace of change in the UK by outlining two of the dimensions of diversity that have particular implications for those working with children and young people who have SEN. The first dimension is ethnic background. In 1951 the non-white population of Britain was very small, perhaps less
4
Principles and concepts than 50,000 (Peach 1982). By January 2007 one pupil in five in England alone was recorded as having an ethnic minority background – 21.9 per cent of pupils in maintained primary schools and 17.7 per cent in maintained secondary schools (Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) 2007c). At the same time there were nearly 800,000 pupils learning English as an additional language (EAL) – 13.5 per cent of pupils in maintained primary schools and 10.5 per cent in secondary schools (DCSF 2007c). While most minority ethnic children and children learning EAL live in urban areas, there has been a good deal of dispersal from the initial areas of settlement: All secondary schools in England, and about three quarters of primary schools have at least some minority ethnic pupils. The great majority of teachers across the country may now expect to work with minority ethnic pupils at some point in their career (Department for Education and Skills (DfES) 2004c: 2) The second dimension is family organization. Fewer people than in the past spend the whole of their childhood with their biological parents and siblings in a household comprising a traditional nuclear family. Divorce is more common, and more men and women choose to cohabit without marrying. The proportion of children living in lone-parent families in Great Britain more than tripled between 1972 and spring 2004, to 24 per cent (Horton 2005). Adoption by stepfathers is increasingly common: about half of adoption orders made in England and Wales each year are to birth parents (usually mothers) and their spouses (Finch 2003). O’Donnell (1999) reported that in recent years there has been increased appreciation within the law of different family structures and of functional parenthood. But traditional ways of thinking about roles and responsibilities in relation to children have remained a key reference point in our culture. For example, those responsible for academic research and professional services have generally construed lesbian parents in terms of how they are similar to and different from heterosexual parents (Clarke 2002). It is much more common than in the past for both parents in households with dependent children to be in paid employment. 68 per cent of such families in the UK were in that position in 2004, while the proportion of lone parents in employment rose to 54 per cent in that year (Walling 2005). Parents of children with SEN find themselves under particular pressure. For example, Beresford (1995) found that in a sample of 1000 families of children with physical disabilities:
•
household income tended to be lower on average than among families with non-disabled children (although they faced additional costs);
• • •
fewer parents were in full-time employment;
•
almost half of the parents had not found their relationships with professionals supportive.
the family home was often unsuitable for the care of a child with disabilities; two-thirds of the parents did not belong to a parent support group, though those who did found them helpful;
The father of a deaf-blind girl who had a rare genetic disorder called
Inclusion and diversity
5
Pallister–Killian syndrome recalled his first vivid memory of contact with professionals like this: For many months after Eléonore’s birth (in France), we knew that something wasn’t right, but nobody, professionals included, could quite put their finger on what precisely was wrong. The first experience that stands out in my mind took place at a children’s hospital in southwest France, where Eléonore had been sent for tests. There must have been over a dozen people in her room: a neurologist, ophthalmologist, physiotherapist, audiologist, paediatrician, some medical students and, at one point, the mistress of one of the specialists waiting to take him to lunch. My wife and I were gradually being shunted to the far corner of the room, as being of little importance to the proceedings. When I finally asked the most senior consultant if he knew what was wrong he replied, ‘No.’ ‘But is it serious?’ my wife asked. ‘Yes, very.’ This was how we were informed of the major difficulties we, and Eléonore, would be facing – a very isolating occasion. (Sigel 2004: 45) The arrangements for family organization and welfare support which meet the needs of most families in society appear to fall short in relation to families with children who have disabilities. There are good reasons to believe that the difficulties are exacerbated in lone-parent families and among some ethnic and linguistic minority communities (Caesar et al. 1994; Beresford 1995; Emerson et al. 2004). Any analysis of the education of children with SEN needs to take full account of the increasing diversity of society and the impact this has on the kinds of professional services and educational provision that are required.
Key concepts in charting diversity As society becomes more heterogeneous, the terms that are used to describe its diversity become themselves a focus of debate and dissent. This applies equally to concepts that are associated with visible markers of diversity such as race or ethnicity (Ryan 1999) and to concepts that are associated with changing views on diversity such as handicap and disability (Corbett 1995, 1998). It is important to be explicit and clear about what one means when using such terms. We will attempt to clarify in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 how the concepts of SEN and inclusion are used in this book. At this point it is necessary to clarify how we intend to use the terms relating to racial, ethnic and cultural diversity. It is very common for terms in this area to be used loosely. At worst, the effect is demeaning and racist. It may be helpful to have not only working definitions of some of the key terms but also observations on ways of using them that we have tried to avoid in this book. Race was originally a biological concept categorizing a group of people who are connected by common descent or origin and have some common physical features. This term is often used in a metaphorical and over-generalized way in accounts of the speaker’s own group or other groups. Talking in terms of race tends to reinforce traditional stereotypes. Culture encompasses the learned traditions and aspects of lifestyle that are shared by members of a society, including their habitual ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. The use of this term is often based on an unjustified assumption
6
Principles and concepts that there is a high level of cultural cohesion and homogeneity in the social group that is being described (especially when it is a group of which one is not a member). Ethnicity is a label that reflects perceived membership of, and a sense of belonging to, a distinctive social group. The crucial distinguishing features of an ethnic group vary between different contexts and change over time. They may include physical appearance, first language, religious beliefs and practices, national allegiance, family structure and occupation (Thomas 1994). A person’s ethnic identity may be defined by their own categorization of themselves or by how others see them. The use of terms such as ethnic group tends to focus attention on a particular aspect of an individual’s identity. But in contemporary society everyone, whether adult or child, has multiple roles and complex identities. It is beyond the scope of this book to explore issues of cultural change and ethnic evolution in detail. We recognize that the definitions that are given here represent just one serviceable way of clarifying the scope of each concept. Fuller discussions of the implications of adopting different definitions may be found in Baumann (1996) and Bhopal (2004). One reason why it seems important to highlight these dimensions of diversity in a book on SEN is that there is strong evidence of the operation of institutional racism in the delivery of services to children with SEN in many Western societies. Institutional racism has been defined as: the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people. (Macpherson 1999: para. 6.34) When SEN provision began to expand in the West during the post-war period, once ethnically based statistics were collected, it became clear that there were higher than expected numbers of children from some minority communities in some forms of special provision. This was true not only in the UK (Tomlinson 1984) but also in the USA (Losen and Orfield 2002; Harry 2007), in eastern Europe (Gray et al. 2003), and in Germany (Powell 2005). For example, in England and Wales in 1972 children from the newly established West Indian communities in many cities constituted only 1.1 per cent of all children in maintained primary and secondary schools, but 4.9 per cent of all children in schools for the educationally subnormal (Tomlinson 1984: 21–2). Over the years the most dramatic forms of over-representation of black pupils in SEN provision in England were reduced, but there remain important areas where anomalies have persisted. For example, African-Caribbean pupils continue to be over-represented in schools for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties (Lindsay et al. 2006) and among pupils who are excluded from school (DfES 2006j). Bangladeshi pupils are over-represented among pupils identified as having hearing impairment and Pakistani pupils among those with profound and multiple learning difficulties and sensory difficulties (Lindsay et al. 2006). Two new groups have emerged in recent analyses of over-representation in English schools among pupils with statements of SEN and pupils with SEN without statements – children with a
Inclusion and diversity
7
Gypsy/Roma or Traveller of Irish Heritage background (DfES 2006d). The overall numbers are small, and data on group differences need to be treated with caution. But the overall trend in the results is consistent. At the same time some ethnic groups are under-represented in terms of particular types of special need. For example, Chinese pupils and pupils from most Asian groups are less likely to be identified as having moderate learning difficulties or specific learning difficulties (Lindsay et al. 2006). A survey of 13 local education authority (LEA) areas in England indicated that children from an Asian background were much less likely to have a formal statement of SEN for autistic spectrum disorders than white children in the same areas (Marchant et al. 2006). It has been suggested that, when pupils are learning English as an additional language, it can be difficult to determine whether any academic problems that they encounter in school are caused solely by language differences or have their roots in underlying learning difficulties (see Cline and Shamsi, 2000). The issue of under-representation will be discussed in Chapter 7 below. Lindsay et al. (2006) argued that under-representation should be treated as seriously as overrepresentation and employed the term ‘disproportionality’ in their review of the issue. The findings about ethnic disproportionality reflect a more widespread phenomenon: SEN provision reflects a diverse society in uneven ways across a range of dimensions of diversity. For example, boys tend to outnumber girls by a large margin in schools for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties, but by only a very small amount in schools for those with profound learning difficulties and hearing difficulties (Riddell 1996; House of Commons Education and Skills Committee 2006: Annex Chart 10). Similarly, children from workingclass backgrounds are over-represented among those assessed as having moderate learning difficulties but not among those assessed as having severe learning difficulties (Lindsay et al. 2006). These issues are discussed in more detail in Chapters 3, 7, 12 and 15. Sociologists of education have drawn a distinction between the forms of SEN that are usually identified in terms of apparently ‘objective’ criteria (e.g. the existence of visual impairment) and forms of SEN where subjective and relativistic judgement has a greater influence on diagnosis (e.g. emotional and behavioural difficulties). It seems likely that the risk of social bias affecting the processes of identification and assessment will be greater when teachers and other professionals are working with children in the second ‘non-normative’ category (Tomlinson 1982). As in the case of institutional racism, discrimination may occur through ‘unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and . . . stereotyping’. Those insights and strategies that minimize the risk of institutional racism will also be likely to improve equity and effectiveness in relation to other dimensions of diversity. Thus, although ethnic and linguistic minorities constitute a relatively small proportion of the country’s population, an analysis of SEN in relation to these groups has a significance far beyond their numbers. A key question in every chapter of this book will be whether any analysis or intervention that is described can measure up to the diversity of those minorities and to the challenges of racism that they face. If they pass that criterion, they are likely to stand the test of time with the broader and less heterogeneous groupings that make up the rest of the population. As we saw above, these groupings are themselves becoming
8
Principles and concepts increasingly heterogeneous in many ways. We will employ an interactional model in order to ensure appropriate sensitivity to cultural context, and we believe that this will also enhance the analysis of SEN issues for all children within a range of educational contexts.
An integrated approach This book seeks to promote an integrated approach to SEN along a number of dimensions:
• • • •
SEN and educational provision; theoretical approaches to SEN; research and practice; multi-disciplinary teamwork to promote effective education and support.
The first three of these themes are introduced in this section, and the fourth in Chapter 2. All four are developed throughout the book SEN and educational provision SEN are taken to be the outcome of an interaction between the individual characteristics of learners and the educational environments in which they are learning. This means that, if we are to fully understand the learning difficulties experienced by some children, we have to consider the curriculum and learning environment being provided for them. An analysis of learning difficulties in literacy or mathematics, for example, should incorporate a consideration of the curriculum demands and methods of teaching generally employed in these subject areas. Most attention in recent public debate on SEN provision has focused at school level with the question where should children who have SEN be taught? There is a case for refocusing the debate at classroom level with the question how should they be taught? If an account of a child’s SEN is to be pedagogically useful, it needs to be built on an account of their educational environment and of how they have responded to it, and it needs to lead up to an analysis of the implications that might have for differential teaching: teaching children with SEN has to be seen in terms of a multi-levelled interacting system in which individual children are nested in the class group, whole school, local authority, regional and central government policies and practices. Classroom pedagogy is nested within teaching programmes that are determined by school and then ultimately national programmes and commitments. (Lewis and Norwich 2005: 220) The importance of an integrated approach is widely recognized and advocated. The Code of Practice on the identification and assessment of pupils with SEN advises: ‘The assessment process should always be fourfold. It should focus on the child’s learning characteristics, the learning environment that the
Inclusion and diversity
9
school is providing for the child, the task and the teaching style’ (DfES 2001a: para. 5.6). However, it appears that what has happened in practice has more often reflected a ‘within-child’ model of SEN. Goacher et al. (1988) reported that statements of SEN and the professional reports on which they were based focused largely on deficits within the child in discussing their SEN. They found that very little attention was given to the learning environment. Seven years later a similar conclusion was reached by a working group of educational psychologists set up to review and develop approaches to assessing the learning environments of pupils who have SEN (Frederickson and Cline 1995). A small-scale study of teachers’ views on emotional and behavioural difficulties has suggested that many teachers continue to focus solely on within-child and family factors when seeking to explain such problems (Avramadis and Bayliss 1998). These findings have been supported by cross-cultural research in Australia and China which reported that teachers in both countries attributed misbehaviour most to within-child factors and least to teacher factors (Ho 2004). Throughout this book we discuss ways of integrating SEN identification, assessment and intervention into an analysis of the educational curriculum and the learning environment that is provided. For example, two of the four chapters in Part Two on approaches to assessment of SEN concern assessment for learning and the assessment of learning environments. This is line with the SEN Code of Practice (DfES 2001a) which made it clear that the learning environment, the learning task and teaching style should be assessed, as well as the learning characteristics of individual children. McKee and Witt (1990) suggested that one reason why so much SEN assessment focuses on within-child factors is that professionals lack knowledge and confidence in other forms of assessment. We aim to support readers in developing the knowledge and expertise that are required.
Theoretical approaches to SEN There are a number of theoretical approaches to SEN that start from different perspectives. Often, different theoretical approaches focus on different aspects so that it is difficult to integrate the insights and ideas that they offer. The definition and explanation of what children and teachers experience as ‘learning difficulties’ become a site for fruitless debates between theorists and practitioners who adopt incompatible terminology to reflect different perspectives and then cannot engage in a meaningful dialogue. This happened when sociologists of education and educational psychologists studied SEN assessment with different assumptions and when geneticists, neurologists, cognitive psychologists and teachers each tried to understand dyslexia by looking at a different aspect of the phenomenon. For many years the field of emotional and behavioural difficulties was the site of confused debates about the competing insights of behavioural, cognitive, psychodynamic and systemic theories. In some respects the accounts offered by different theoretical approaches to SEN conflict with each other, but in other respects they may be considered to complement each other. It would appear desirable to be able to draw on different approaches in order both to ensure a comprehensive consideration of the area involved and to capitalize on the relative usefulness of different approaches for
10
Principles and concepts different purposes. Morton and Frith (1995) achieved a significant breakthrough in the integration of different theoretical perspectives on problems in child development and SEN. They developed a visual framework in which it is possible to represent different theories so that their commonalities and differences are readily apparent. The framework allows both difficulties of development and hypothesized causal influences to be described in terms of biology, cognition, behaviour and environmental factors or interactions (Morton 2004). In this book we make considerable use of this framework to offer an integrated account of the diverse theoretical formulations that are available for many aspects of SEN. Research and practice A further theme that permeates this book is the interplay between research and practice. There has been extensive debate for over a decade about the quality of much educational research and its relevance to either educational policy or classroom practice (Hargreaves 1996; Hillage et al. 1998; Tooley and Darby 1998). A central issue has been the extent to which practice can and should be based on research evidence. On the one hand, Hillage et al. (1998: 60) recommend that ‘more evidence-based decision making should be encouraged where appropriate’. On the other hand, Hammersley (1997: 156) concludes: there is much wrong with the quality of teaching in schools . . . But it seems to me that educational research can only play a fairly limited role in resolving the problems. It can highlight and analyse them, and attempt to provide some understanding. But remedying the failings of schools is a practical business that necessarily depends on professional expertise of a kind that is not reducible to publicly available evidence, even that provided by research. The proponents of evidence-based practice do not maintain that research evidence is the only knowledge base which will be drawn on in professional practice. However, they do highlight the extent to which other kinds of professional expertise also suffer from limitations. Hargreaves (1997: 411) draws an analogy with medicine which has been much discussed: Much clinical work depends on best practice (i.e. what works) derived from tradition and personal experience. Both are potentially deeply flawed, so must be subject to scientific test. When evidence is produced on whether one therapy rather than another makes for a more effective or speedier benefit to patients in certain categories or circumstances, it becomes a valuable component in the matrix of factors considered by a doctor in making a clinical decision. Research transforms individual tinkering into public knowledge that has greater validity and can be shared among the profession as the evidential base for better clinical practice. Hargreaves argues that teachers also need to make complex decisions and that their decision making could be enhanced by the establishment of a more relevant research base in education. He also identifies a need to establish a culture of accountability in education and openness to new ideas wherein there is an expectation that the best available knowledge on ‘what works with whom, under what conditions and with what effects’ (Hargreaves 1997: 414) will be sought and
Inclusion and diversity
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utilized. This book aims to support teachers, educational psychologists and others who are seeking to update and develop their knowledge of the research base in key areas of practice for pupils who have SEN. At the same time, critics of an evidence-informed approach to educational practice have highlighted the dangers of a simplistic view, arguing that ‘knowledge cannot be applied, like paint, to a blandly receptive body’ (Edwards 1998: 89). In addition, the relationship between research and practice cannot be a one-way street. Research findings may be generalizations drawn from work with representative groups. Or they may be insights drawn from case studies in which the researcher focuses on a unique individual or situation. ‘Good practice’ that is based on findings from either type of research will not be effective with every child. The only way to learn if an approach is successful in promoting the learning of an individual pupil is through the careful collection of data in monitoring their progress (Good et al. 1998). There are many parallels between the process of research and the approach to assessment recommended in the revised Code of Practice and adopted in this text. Such an approach involves:
•
generating hypotheses about the difficulties being experienced by a pupil in a particular learning environment;
•
collecting a range of data and information from different sources to test out the hypotheses being considered;
•
giving careful attention to the reliability and validity of the information collected;
•
drawing conclusions about the actions most likely to be effective in promoting the pupil’s progress;
•
monitoring changes in pupil progress in response to the action taken so that its effectiveness can be evaluated and any further assessment and intervention initiated.
Teachers who undertake extended and repeated cycles of assessment and teaching with pupils who have learning difficulties are actively engaged in a form of investigation of SEN that can contribute to enhancing how we think about the phenomenon in general as well as advancing an individual’s learning. Edwards (1998) suggested that such activities can provide a basis for research that is reflexive and conducted on the analogy of a ‘conversation’ with its participants, where there is the potential for mutually illuminating outcomes. Other researchers who have investigated ways of increasing the contribution of research to the improvement of practice have reached very similar conclusions. Robinson (1993: vii) writes from a New Zealand perspective that: Researchers must conduct . . . processes of problem understanding and resolution as a critical dialogue with practitioners, so that competing theories of the problem can be adjudicated and new theories of action learned during the course of the research itself, rather than left to some subsequent process of dissemination. It seems that the different approaches to research which have been touched on in this section may each have a contribution to make to practice. Selection of strategies may valuably be informed by evidence about what generally is found to
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Principles and concepts work in a specific kind of situation. What kind of evidence will be relevant will depend on the type of question that is posed (Frederickson 2002). The development of an application which is tailor-made for a particular context is likely to require the engagement of those involved in a problem-solving process from which some more broadly generalizable learning is likely also to result. Finally, there will be a need for systematic collection of data that will allow evaluation of the success of a particular application of a specific strategy in relation to the objectives identified for the pupil or pupils involved. In future also the increasing focus on accountability requirements and evidence-based practice in education is likely to fuel demand for systematic evaluation at the organizational level, in schools and local authorities, of local variants of national initiatives (Sebba 2004).
The structure of this book Throughout this book we attempt to analyse SEN in a way that takes account of the diversity of modern British society and respects the range of individual perspectives and rights of different stakeholders in the education system. We argue for the integration of different strands of theory, research and practice. We also explore the implications of an interactional perspective which, on the one hand, considers the different layers of environmental influence that impact on individual functioning and, on the other hand, recognizes the extent to which such influences are mediated by the meanings that individuals ascribe to them. Ethnic and cultural differences represent important dimensions of diversity along which differences in the ways individuals interpret their worlds may be identified and environmental influences may vary. Part One is concerned with key principles and concepts that influence work with SEN. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the key concepts of SEN and inclusion. Chapter 5 examines how SEN develop in children’s lives and will introduce Morton and Frith’s causal modelling framework which allows an integrated consideration of different theoretical perspectives on problems in child development and SEN. This chapter also shows how increasing understanding of genetic factors in development and rapid advances in neuroscience are influencing our thinking about SEN. Part Two examines how SEN have been identified and assessed. Assessment is seen in its social and cultural context, and the contentious issues of bias and equity are addressed. Chapters 8 and 9 outline key approaches to assessment in educational settings that have particular importance when an interactional approach is adopted but have often received insufficient emphasis in individually focused approaches to SEN assessment – assessment for learning and the assessment of learning environments. Part Three examines specific areas of SEN, including learning difficulties, literacy and mathematics. A book that attempts to address the challenges of SEN in a multiethnic society must take problems of communication very seriously. Part Three includes a substantial section on communication and interaction (Chapters 10–11). It also includes an examination of the area of need that possibly poses the greatest challenge to the goals of inclusion: behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. There are new chapters in this edition on autism and physical needs, and the chapter on sensory needs now covers visual as well as hearing impairment.
2 Stakeholders in special educational needs and inclusion
Objectives When you have studied this chapter you should:
•
•
be aware of major changes that have affected the main stakeholders in schools and the relationships between them over recent years, and be able to outline some implications of these changes for work with children who have special educational needs; be familiar with the way in which services for children are developing and understand the implications of these changes for work with children who have special educational needs.
Contents Introduction Children and young people Parents
• •
The changing role and contributions of parents in schools Parents whose children have SEN
Schools Multi-disciplinary teamwork within integrated children’s services
Introduction The key stakeholders in education are children, families and schools. If an integrated approach is to be developed towards SEN, it will need to take account of the individual perspectives of each of these stakeholders. Social changes and legal reform have affected their position vis-à-vis one another over the last thirty years. In addition, many other professionals play a role in the support of children who have SEN and of their families. The ways in which the services provided by these professionals are organized have evolved with the aim of ensuring that they collaborate more closely and support children and families more effectively. In this chapter we will examine the contributions that a range of stakeholders now make to the education and well-being of children who have SEN. The starting point is the group that has the greatest stake – the children and young people themselves.
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Principles and concepts
Children and young people In the past children were treated in law in many countries as simply the possession of their parents. Slowly it has been accepted that they should have legal rights as separate individuals and that their views should be taken into account when decisions are being made about them. Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that: 1
States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
2
For this purpose, the child shall in particular be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial or administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law. (Newell 1991: 44)
The United Kingdom signed up to that convention and has slowly begun to enshrine many of its provisions in UK law. For example, Section 53 of the Children Act 2004 in England requires that, when local authorities determine what services to offer children in need, they must, ‘so far as is reasonably practicable and consistent with the child’s welfare, ascertain the child’s wishes and feelings and give them due consideration (having regard to the child’s age and understanding)’. To the dismay of some teachers’ representatives, school inspectors have begun to take account of pupils’ perceptions of their schools (Shaw 2003). The Department for Education and Skills has issued official guidance to encourage the process (DfES 2004d). The first Code of Practice on SEN introduced guidance on the issue, advising that schools should ‘make every effort to identify the ascertainable views and wishes of the child or young person about his or her current and future education’ (DfE 1994a: para. 2: 36). This guidance was considerably strengthened in the revised Code of Practice in which one of five ‘fundamental principles’ was that ‘the views of the child should be sought and taken into account’ (DfES 2001a: para 1.5). A whole chapter was devoted to pupil participation on the basis that children with SEN have a right ‘to be involved in making decisions and exercising choice’ (para 3.1). Subsequent statements of policy have reinforced this emphasis (e.g. DfES 2004c: paras 3.38–3.39). Similar provisions exist in legislation and policy guidance in other parts of the UK (e.g. the Education (Disability Strategies and Pupils’ Educational Records) (Scotland) Act 2002) and elsewhere in Europe (e.g. Ireland; see Keogh and Whyte 2005). Two main arguments were set out in the first SEN Code of Practice:
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Practical: children have important and relevant information; their support is crucial to the effective implementation of any individual education programme.
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Principle: children have a right to be heard (DfE 1994a, para. 2.35; cf. Gersch 1992: 26).
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Davie (1996) has argued that, when schools introduce arrangements for consulting and involving pupils, there is such immediate evidence of the value of the exercise that the principle has ‘the characteristic of self-reinforcement’. It is increasingly common to seek pupils’ views about their schools (Cullingford 2002; Hoby 2002; Reay 2006) and about other services such as early years settings (Clark and Moss 2005), arrangements for looked-after children (Butler 2006), mental health services (Worrall-Davies and Marino-Francis 2008) and educational psychology services (Woolfson and Harker 2002; Ashton 2007). Researchers have begun to move beyond the basic questions about what pupils think so as to explore teachers’ reactions to the ideas that pupils put forward in such surveys (e.g. McIntyre et al. 2005) and to investigate how pupils themselves view the methods that are used to investigate their perspectives (May 2005; Hill 2006). In some cases pupils are being given greater control of the agenda about what should be investigated (Thomson and Gunter 2006). Most of this work has been conducted with children who do not have SEN or learning difficulties, and some of the methods of inquiry that have been used, such as lengthy questionnaires or focus group meetings, would not give an effective voice to some children who have learning difficulties. It is clear that finding out how children and young people with SEN see a situation brings new and illuminating insights for the adults involved. For example, in an investigation of the working of a free-standing SEN unit situated on the campus of a mainstream secondary school, Sinclair Taylor (1995: 263) showed that it was only when the pupils in the unit expressed their views that it became clear that ‘the unit, rather than promoting integration, fostered the marginalisation of its pupils’. Similarly, an enquiry into the ‘truantist perspective’ led Southwell (2006) to propose an approach to thinking about truancy that sees renewed attendance as dependent on addressing unmet educational needs. Researchers working in a range of settings have confirmed the value of children’s direct representations for routine planning and management of SEN provision. For example, Watson et al. (2007) showed that the evaluation of multi-agency services could incorporate the investigation of the views of children with complex healthcare needs, even those who had no verbal communication. It is potentially a two-way process: Dickinson (2006) showed that an inclusive culture within a voluntary organization can assist in ensuring that information about the way the organization works is shared effectively with young disabled children. In formal situations, when important decisions are being taken about an individual’s future (e.g. in meetings to resolve disagreements about SEN provision) Soar et al. (2006) proposed that some kind of child advocacy service might be a way forward. The independence of the advocate would be crucial to the success of such a service. But, outside such formal occasions, could children and young people with SEN not be encouraged to give voice to their own views themselves without an intermediary? In a study of the participation of pupils with SEN in decision making about their needs in 18 schools, Norwich and Kelly (2006) found that school ethos was the ‘outstanding and pervasive’ factor that determined how far children’s direct participation was supported. Their informants highlighted a range of methods for ascertaining children’s views. While talking in formal or informal settings was the most common, adults also sometimes found it helpful to observe non-verbal signs in order to supplement listening, to scribe children’s views or to have them draw
16
Principles and concepts pictures. They used opportunities while away from school on residential trips to talk and listen, they used picture cards to prompt the expression of views, and adapted questionnaires to make them child-friendly. The researchers’ analysis of what different stakeholders considered to be barriers to effective participation indicated that staff and pupils highlighted different problems. The adults were more likely to mention factors within the children themselves such as limited cognitive capabilities, problems in communicating and a tendency to be influenced by their peers’ responses. Children, on the other hand, were more likely to mention factors relating to the school or to teachers, such as non-negotiable targets, over-interpreting or misinterpreting children’s views, doubts that they would keep pupil’s views confidential, and not themselves being in control over what was written about their views. Many commentators have suggested that the greatest obstacle to effective consultation involving children with learning difficulties lies in a failure to find an appropriate method of eliciting their views. Norwich and Kelly (2006: 269) argued that ‘not all limits are a matter of removing obstacles or finding ways and means round barriers to the valued end of participation. It is conceivable that another valued end may conflict with children’s participation.’ They found that some of the staff they interviewed identified a competing principle of child protective values as a constraining factor. Staff expressed concern that making this group of children responsible for giving their views on important matters affecting them might create new threats to their self-esteem and place a burden on them that they would find onerous. In some cases, therefore, a tension was apparent between participation and protectiveness, which would require ‘finding a justifiable balance between genuine values’ (2006: 269). It seems likely that, apart from the tensions identified by Norwich and Kelly, a major obstacle to greater involvement of children and young people who have SEN is uncertainty among other stakeholders about how best to enable them to communicate their views and learn the views of others. These concerns about methods of consultation have been addressed in many recent initiatives. Examples include:
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using a questionnaire with cartoons and voice bubbles as a framework for enabling children aged 10+ to present their views in a formal way as part of the SEN assessment procedure (Gersch et al. 1993);
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helping children in a ‘one-to-one tutorial’ to draft written replies about their views to a series of short, open-ended questions as a contribution to the annual meeting at which their SEN statement is reviewed (Jelly et al. 2000);
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using a ‘graphic facilitator’ in a group meeting to discuss a child’s views during the annual review of their SEN statement, the role of the graphic facilitator being to record what is being said through drawing simple pictures that capture the main point (Hayes 2004);
•
exploring the views of a group of young people with profound and complex learning needs on a drama production in which they had participated, using photographs of the production, including pictures taken during both rehearsals and performance and making additional use of Makaton for one student and of ‘Talking Mats’ for several others (Whitehurst 2007);
Stakeholders
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•
encouraging students in the middle years of schooling to use photography to formulate and present their views of their school (Moss et al. 2007);
•
supporting children with a range of SEN in a large scale study to express themselves without interference during individual and small-group interviews through a variety of means, including puppets (of particular value as a quiet confidante), drawing (as a starting point for discussion), ‘diamond ranking’ (a creative sorting task using sticky notes written or drawn by the interviewer at the child’s dictation), and exploring a particular event, recalled by the pupil, in more detail through the support of cue cards (Lewis et al. 2005).
Children with less severe difficulties can contribute in larger numbers if questionnaires are adapted to their competence level and if researchers are prepared to read items aloud for them and act as scribes when needed. Wade and Moore (1993) used a sentence completion technique to give children the opportunity to offer open-ended comments on their views, even when they could not manage extended free writing. When the children were asked to complete the sentence ‘I get worried in some lessons because . . .’, they expressed their lack of confidence in completions such as: I can’t do it very well. (Girl, 7–11) Sometimes I do not no how to do my work. (Girl, 7–11) I can’t do a lot on my own. (Girl, 12–16) I think the teacher is going to tell me off. (Boy, 12–16) Safeguards are required so that children are provided with a listener whom they feel they can trust and in order to ensure that they do not simply say what they assume their listener wants to hear (Dockrell et al. 2000). It is important that their understanding of the situation is elucidated: do they feel that they are being interrogated because something is wrong? Do they understand what their views are being collected for and how their contribution will be used? Lewis and Porter (2004) developed guidelines for interviewing children and young people with severe and profound learning difficulties and point out that one of the many challenges involved in this process is the need to explain to participants how and why, after hearing their views, the adults have decided to make (or not make) a particular response. There may also be problems in interpreting what children intend to say. A strategy that has aroused a good deal of controversy is asking children to draw in order to elucidate their attitudes. This approach has strong advocates (e.g. Dalton 1996) and severe critics (e.g. Dockrell et al. 2000). On the one hand, drawing may reflect ‘aspects of knowing which exist at lower levels of awareness than that of verbal articulation’ (Ravenette, quoted by Dalton 1996). On the other hand, drawings are ambiguous and the factors that determine what a child draws are complex. It is not easy to decide unequivocally for any single drawing what message it conveys about the child’s views of the subject: ‘A child may draw a person crying for many reasons’ (Dockrell et al. 2000: 57). Those who think that problems of interpretation need not eliminate the use of drawing tasks for this purpose altogether, tend to emphasize the value of specific
18
Principles and concepts safeguards. These tend to be introduced to prevent investigators imposing their own projected ideas onto their version of what the child is communicating. Most commonly what is advocated is the principle of triangulation – seeking confirmatory evidence from other sources, for instance through a ‘mosaic’ approach that gives young children the time and opportunity to express their views in different ways (Clark and Moss 2005). Multi-method approaches to assessment are advocated throughout this book. Steps can also be taken ‘within method’ to provide checks on the reliability of the interpretations made. For example, Ravenette (1997, 1999) invited children to construct the opposite of a picture they had created in order to help them to explain or show what they thought the first picture signified (cf. Maxwell 2006). This strategy has its roots in Kelly’s (1991) personal construct theory in which people’s ideas about their personal world are represented as a continuum between opposites (cf. Salmon 1988; Stoker and Walker 1996). Ultimately, investigating the perspectives of children with SEN simply reflects in a particularly stark form the key dilemmas that face investigators with all children: how can adults learn what children think and feel without influencing and distorting the message? Activity 2.1
Involving students in the planning of a resource base
It has been agreed that five old-style classrooms on the ground floor of a large secondary school should be converted for use as a ‘resource base’ for older students with moderate and severe learning difficulties. They are all in one area of a long corridor, and structural changes are being considered. The architects who have been given the commission to design the adaptation wish to see students from both mainstream classes and the existing ‘Special Unit’ actively involved. Their firm has offered to donate a number of digital cameras for use by students and the time of one of their trainee staff as a source of support. What suggestions and guidance would you give about this project if you were a member of the school staff with responsibility for planning the resource base?
Parents The changing role and contributions of parents in schools Over the last 40 years increasing emphasis has been placed on the value of parents’ involvement in the education of their children. Initially attention was primarily focused on the negative consequences of mismatches between home and school. From the 1960s onwards a series of official committees and other bodies stressed the importance for schools of encouraging good working relationships with parents and their closer involvement in schools (Cullingford 1985; Vincent 1996: Chaps 1–3). By the end of the century, Kelley-Laine (1998) was reporting on an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) survey that showed widespread encouragement of parental involvement in education across nine countries, including the UK. The following reasons for increasing parental involvement were identified:
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Democracy. In some countries parents are considered to have a right to involvement in their child’s education.
Stakeholders
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Accountability. Parental involvement is seen as a means of making schools more accountable to the community that finances them.
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Consumer choice. Parents are encouraged to choose the education they want for their child and complain if it falls short of their expectations. This is seen as a mechanism for making schools more responsive to society’s requirements of them.
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Means of raising standards. Research has shown that high-achieving, wellordered schools are characterized by good home–school relationships. It is hoped that improving home–school relationships will have a positive impact on standards.
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Tackling disadvantages and improving equity. Here the focus is on raising the achievements of individual children by helping their parents to support them more effectively at home. This is seen as particularly important where there are cultural differences between family and school.
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Addressing social problems. In some countries school–family programmes are being developed to tackle serious social problems affecting young people (e.g. targeting drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy or delinquency and violent crime).
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Resources. Parents are regarded as a source of extra funds for schools and of unpaid staffing for school trips, sporting activities and additional support in the classroom.
There is thus a wide range of reasons why schools and public authorities endorse effective partnership between home and school. But one goal in particular is emphasized more frequently than any other – the enhancement of student learning. With this goal in mind, Chrispeels (1996) presented an overview of those school practices that have been seen as most effective in this respect, especially in communities where families have few socioeconomic advantages and are likely to be helped by active outreach initiatives from their children’s schools (see Figure 2.1). Reporting on a study of Asian-American, Latino and European-American families, Okagaki and Frensch (1998) highlighted the need to be sensitive to ethnic group differences in parents’ beliefs about education and goals for their children. Working in the USA, they pointed out that it cannot be assumed that what works in some family contexts will necessarily work in all. In a series of case studies in the South of England, Abreu and Cline (2005) examined a particular obstacle to easy collaboration between families and school – the existence of a gap between some parents’ own past experience of school learning (mathematics in this study) and the curriculum and pedagogy now encountered by their children. Whether parents were successful in supporting their children’s learning depended on how they negotiated that gap. This applied to both monolingual and bilingual parents, but for the latter group uncertainties about the use of language for mathematics were an additional concern. It was noted that the children’s teachers appeared not to be aware of how important this worry was to the parents. On the basis of other local studies in England more teams of researchers have called on schools to adapt to the specific needs of parents from minority ethnic communities and have challenged the notion that this group is particularly ‘hard to reach’ (Huss-Keeler 1997; Crozier and Davies 2007).
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Principles and concepts
Figure 2.1 Effective school practices for reinforcing parents’ efforts to enhance their children’s learning Source: Chrispeels (1996).
Parents whose children have SEN The involvement in education of parents whose children have SEN should be considered in the context of the general trends in parental involvement that were outlined above. The Warnock Committee suggested that the relationship between parents and professionals be conceptualized as ‘a partnership and ideally an equal one’ (Department of Education and Science (DES) 1978: 151). However, almost ten years later Wolfendale was to reflect that partnership ‘is a slippery concept, probably because it is rarely manifest’ (Wolfendale 1989: 107). Cunningham and Davis (1985) suggested that the ways in which parent–professional relationships around SEN have been described over the years might be characterized in terms of three models:
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An expert model in which professionals are construed as the source of all knowledge about children who have SEN and where parents are cast in the role of passive recipients of advice from the experts.
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A transplant model in which professionals are regarded as the key decision makers and main source of expertise. However, parents are regarded as a valuable resource and source of active support and intervention for their child. Some of the professionals’ expertise can be transplanted to the parents who are taught to carry out programmes at home.
•
A consumer model in which the parent becomes the key decision maker and the professionals offer information and services from which the parent can select according to their needs.
These three models are contrasted with a partnership model in which
Stakeholders
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teachers are viewed as being experts on education and parents are viewed as being experts on their children. The relationship between teachers and parents can then be a partnership which involves sharing of expertise and control in order to provide the optimum education for children with special needs. (Hornby 1995: 20–1) More recently, a stronger consumerist ethos in society as a whole has led some commentators to portray the teacher as an employee of the parent. Parents consult us for our knowledge and experience of young children and employ us to support them in advancing their child’s educational or other needs. Thus, more than being mere consumers or even equal participants in a partnership with you, parents are actually your employers. They pay considerable taxes for public services and high fees for private services; thus, as with all employers, you are directly accountable to them for your practices. (Porter 2002: 22) Following on from the Warnock Committee’s advocacy of the partnership model in their 1978 report, the 1981 Education Act on SEN appeared to place new power in the hands of parents of children with SEN. However a review of the implementation of the Act by the House of Lords Select Committee on Education, Science and Arts (1987) after six years highlighted a number of concerns about both access to information and the consideration given to parents’ views. There was evidence that the problems may have been even more acute for parents from black and ethnic minority communities. For example, research carried out by Rehal (1989) in one London borough highlighted particularly poor levels of communication with and involvement of Punjabi-speaking parents. Of the 14 parents interviewed only one was aware that their child had been formally assessed under the provisions of the Education Act 1981 and issued with a statement of SEN. Similar concerns were expressed at that time by agencies working with the Bangladeshi community in London (Chaudhury 1986), by investigators of South Asian communities in other cities (Shah 1992) and by researchers working with the African-Caribbean community (Inner London Education Authority 1985: 69–71). A case study by Grugeon (1992) illustrates vividly the way in which parents and professionals from different cultural backgrounds can misunderstand each other in the course of an SEN assessment. She shows in detail how ‘the process . . . has not taken into account the evident disjuncture between the cultural norms of his [the child’s] home and community and those of the school’ (1992: 92). It appears that many authorities and schools ignored the official guidance that the formal notification to parents of SEN assessment and the subsequent reporting should be in a language they understood or for which they could obtain an interpreter (DES 1983). Over the years the guidance has been considerably strengthened. For example, where access to interpreters or translated information material is needed in the early years, the revised Code of Practice makes clear that it is for the LEA (and not the parents) to ensure that it is provided (DfES 2001a: para. 2.13). When such arrangements are made, it is essential that there is sensitivity to the position of the parents and children. In some (probably rare)
22
Principles and concepts situations what is required is exact, word-for-word translation, while in others the bilingual worker may need to take on a wider advisory and liaison function, helping both the family and the professionals to understand the social and cultural assumptions that each is making (Martin 1994; Shackman 1984). There is evidence that the problems reported in the UK are experienced by parents from minority communities internationally, even in countries where their first language is widely spoken (Salas 2004; Hess et al. 2006). In recent years the perception has grown that professionals and LEAs have generally been slow to embrace partnership in so far as it requires active sharing of information and control. Legislation has increasingly been used to attempt to level out the power imbalance in parent–professional relationships, ensuring that parents are empowered and are not denied their rights. This increasing emphasis on parental rights can be seen in the establishment of bodies independent of LAs to which parents can appeal against LA decisions and turn for information. The establishment by the Education Act 1993 of the SEN Tribunal was a major step in this direction. The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act outlined two steps (in Chapter 10, Part I, Sections 2 and 3) which it was hoped would prevent many cases from going to the SEN Tribunal by providing better information and opportunities for negotiation at an early stage. Information on these developments was provided in the revised SEN Code of Practice:
•
All LEAs must make arrangements for parent partnership services and are encouraged to work together with voluntary organizations in doing so. The aim of these services is to ensure that parents of children who have additional needs (not just those with statements) ‘have access to information, advice and guidance in relation to the special educational needs of their children so they can make appropriate, informed decisions’ (DfES 2001a: para. 2.19).
•
All LEAs must provide arrangements ‘which demonstrate independence and credibility in working towards early and informal resolution of disagreements’ (DfES 2001a: para. 2.24). ‘Confidence in disagreement resolution arrangements will be greatest when all concerned consider that the service offered is genuinely independent’ (DfES 2001a: para. 2.26).
Unfortunately a study in one LEA indicated that some parents experienced the Parent Partnership Services as just a further tier of officialdom that distanced them from the ‘real’ decision makers, while some schools were seen as absolving themselves of responsibility for partnership with parents once a designated external team is involved (Todd 2003). A larger-scale national survey indicated higher levels of satisfaction, though with considerable variation between services (Rogers et al. 2006). Some individual partnerships are strongly committed to overcoming such problems and empowering parents at every stage (P. Jones 2006). But case study reports suggest that many parents continue to have negative experiences of the system (Cole 2004). After a detailed study of the experiences of 14 parents in the London area, Pinkus (2005) suggested four principles for parent–professional partnerships that could overcome at least some of the problems in individual situations: (i) Establish consensus regarding the purpose of the partnership, e.g. over the roles and responsibilities of the various partners in relation to arranging meetings, applying for assessments, and so on.
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(ii) Achieve clarity as to who is in the partnership and why (especially important when many professionals are involved with the family – see the final section of this chapter on multi-agency working). (iii) Enable equal power relations (e.g. with all having access to key information on issues such as eligibility criteria for services). (iv) Make special needs procedures as transparent and as accountable as possible. It is widely recognized that, for these principles to be implemented, there would need to be greater clarity and consistency in policies on inclusion (see Chapter 4) and in arrangements for assessment (see Chapter 6). It would also be necessary for support services and specialist professionals to work in a more coordinated way (as discussed later in this chapter). But, while systemic and organizational changes are necessary, they will not in themselves be sufficient. There is a more fundamental requirement at an individual level for changes in the ways in which many professionals perceive and behave towards parents (Norwich et al. 2005). Activity 2.2 Talking with parents about the possible implications of their child’s difficulties at school Ms Faulkner, an inexperienced teacher who has a class of seven year olds, asks you as the school’s special educational needs coordinator (SENCO) for advice. One of the boys in her class, Jason, shows poor motor coordination (e.g. when changing for PE) and is rather isolated within his peer group. In practice tests of maths and English earlier this term his performance indicated that he has made very limited progress in both areas since last tested six months earlier. He is now falling badly behind other pupils in the class. Ms Faulkner is concerned because she will be meeting Jason’s mother later today and wants to initiate action to help Jason. However, she knows that he is an only child and that his mother is reported to see only the best in him. The timing means that you will not be able to join Ms Faulkner for the meeting. What advice would you give her? After you have made some notes on what you would say, review how far your advice would meet Pinkus’s principles (i)–(iv).
Schools Across the developed world the situation of schools has changed substantially in recent years. These changes are perhaps even more radical than the developments affecting the position of children and parents (McLaughlin and Rouse 2000). Previously in the UK the dominant voice in the development of policy on school management and the curriculum was that of professional educators. Schools in the public sector were accountable to governing bodies and subject to inspection, and they worked within a framework of law and regulation that was set by elected politicians. But the democratic touch on the tiller was a rather light one locally and nationally, and it appeared to many observers that the main consumers of the service – the children and their parents – had little influence. Politicians of the right began to argue against the ‘stranglehold’ exerted by ‘public monopoly’ schools. Their case has been summarized as follows:
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Principles and concepts
•
Financial support for schools (via taxation) was not linked directly to the satisfaction of their clients.
•
The absence of profit or loss motives for school managers led to conservative, self-serving, minimalist survival strategies.
• •
Schools’ decision making was dominated by the pursuit of staff self-interest. There were inadequate checks and incentives to foster efficient administration or to force schools to be responsive to parental concerns.
It was argued that these features of the situation allowed educational standards to remain depressed and inhibited any urge to achieve excellence. Furthermore, the fact that schools in the public sector were designed to be similar and that there were restrictions on enrolment meant that parents effectively had no choice and that children’s diverse needs could not be met. (This summary has been adapted from Ball 1993: 4.) The reforms presented as a solution to these problems involved:
•
enhancing quality by creating more competition between schools for resources and public support;
• •
encouraging greater diversity in the organization and funding of schools;
•
giving schools greater autonomy from LEAs in their day-to-day management while making them more accountable.
enhancing parental choice by making enrolment more open and providing more information on which parents could base their decisions about which school would best suit their children;
The overall effect of the changes was intended to be that individual parents would have greater responsibility for the quality of their child’s education. There was certainly a considerable reduction in the powers of LEAs. Schools had greater freedom to compete for pupils, and since resources were linked to pupil numbers, a school needed to be popular in order to guarantee its income. A key lever in the improvement in academic standards was the introduction of the National Curriculum. Schools maintained by LEAs were required to provide for all pupils of statutory school age a basic menu of three core subjects and six foundation subjects (seven in Key Stages 3 and 4 when a modern foreign language was added), plus religious education. Each core and foundation subject would have its objectives and programmes of study specified nationally. All pupils, including those with SEN, would share the right to a broad and balanced curriculum which would be designed to ‘promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils’ (DES 1989b: para. 16). The national specification of the curriculum removed the substantial degree of control that teachers had previously had over what was taught in schools and how it was taught. The reforms went further. At fixed age points (the end of every ‘Key Stage’ of compulsory education) children’s learning would be assessed, and the results for each school would be published. Teachers would thus be accountable for the delivery of the curriculum in a different way than before. The aims were to:
•
give a clear incentive for weaker schools to catch up with the best, while the best were challenged to do even better;
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• • •
provide teachers with detailed and precise objectives;
•
help teachers concentrate on the task of getting the best possible results from each individual child.
provide parents with clear, accurate information; ensure continuity and progression from one year to another, from one school to another;
Parallel changes took place in the Scottish education system, though sometimes with less constraining central control (Riddell and Brown 1995). In Wales, too, there was some divergence after the Education Service became the responsibility of a newly devolved administration. But in England, although there have been substantial developments in the working of the new curriculum arrangements since 1989, the fundamental structures have remained in place. (More recent curriculum initiatives in English and mathematics will be covered in Chapters 13 and 14.) What impact would these radical changes have on the experience of children with SEN? Offcial documents were optimistic, pointing out that: the principle that pupils with SEN share a common entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum with their peers has taken many years to gain acceptance . . . The right extends to every registered pupil of compulsory school age attending a maintained or grant maintained school, whether or not he or she has a statement of SEN. This right is implicit in the 1988 Education Reform Act. (National Curriculum Council 1989b: 1) At the same time it was acknowledged that: the right to share in the curriculum defined in Section 1 of the Act does not automatically ensure access to it nor progress within it. Some pupils will have physical and sensory impairments which make access into a challenge; others have intellectual or emotional difficulties in learning. Some will meet attitudes and practices in schools which do not actively encourage full participation. Achieving maximum access and subsequent progress for pupils with SEN will challenge the co-operation, understanding and planning skills of teachers, support agencies, parents, governors and many others. (National Curriculum Council 1989b: 1–2) Commentators from the SEN field mostly adopted a more pessimistic tone and emphasized that many of the challenges in the new context arose from aspects of the new policies themselves. For example, Upton (1990: 4) reported that many were concerned about the relevance of traditional subjects to children who present severe learning difficulties and the effects which the introduction of an apparently narrowly conceived academic curriculum may have on the teaching of cross curricular issues such as social and life skills. In the event, many of the concerns about the curriculum were soon allayed, and resolute efforts have been made to ensure that there is meaningful access to an appropriate version of the full curriculum for all pupils. (See Chapter 12 for a
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Principles and concepts discussion of what this means in the case of children with profound and multiple learning difficulties.) The most serious challenges for children with SEN and their parents appeared to arise not from the National Curriculum but from other provisions in the reform programme. The arrangements for greater financial delegation to schools might, in principle, have enabled schools to make more flexible provision for pupils with SEN, because it gave them greater control over resources. But the allocation of funds depended on pupil numbers; schools were ranked on ‘league tables’ that were to be based on the overall performance of their pupils in National Curriculum subjects. If schools allocated resources to pupils with SEN whose performance might not raise the aggregate achievement level, they were making what would appear in an open financial market a risky investment. Another effect of the changes was to force LAs to delegate a steadily higher proportion of their funds to schools. LAs are now smaller, leaner organizations, and hence cannot provide central services to support schools with SEN in the same way as in the past (Ofsted 2005d). Decentralizing such provision risks the advantages of scale being lost and other priorities swallowing up the available funding at school level (except where there is a statutory safeguard – see Chapter 3). Irrespective of the impact of the reforms on children with SEN, research across a wide front has challenged claims that they have been effective in achieving their objectives for the bulk of the school population:
•
The assessments at the end of each Key Stage have been shown to be so unreliable that approx 32 per cent of the results for Key Stage 2 and approx 43 per cent of those for Key Stage 3 are misclassified by at least one level (Black and Wiliam 2006).
•
An apparent rise in standards at Key Stage 2 test scores between 1995 and 2000 was substantially overstated, though there was some improvement (Statistics Commission 2005).
•
Because many of the ‘failing’ schools are in deprived urban areas, the penalties associated with attending them appear to impact disproportionately on minority ethnic and other socially disadvantaged groups (Tomlinson 2000).
•
An emphasis on the importance of school inspections and annual tests has well-attested side-effects such as ‘window-dressing for inspection’ and ‘teaching to the test’ (de Wolf and Janssens 2007).
As the initial reforms proved to have, at best, only limited success, attention turned to school structures, and new types of school have been introduced – more flexible, more independent of local authority control and, therefore, it was argued, more responsive to parental demands (DfES 2006b). The particular challenge of failing schools in disadvantaged urban areas was tackled through the establishment of new academies – all-ability schools established by sponsors from business, faith or voluntary groups working in partnership with central government and local education partners. The capital and running costs are met from the public purse. Academies are not required to follow the National Curriculum and are expected over time to develop new approaches to the content and delivery of the curriculum. It may be relevant that evidence has accumulated that many schools
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have responded to the ‘high stakes’ testing regime by narrowing their curriculum offer or, at least, allocating more time to those subjects that are tested – evidence that has not always been published by the official authorities responsible for collecting it (Mansell 2007). As the inclusion of pupils with SEN has slowly become a central goal of government policy and the rhetoric of inclusion has been increasingly espoused at every level, schools find themselves caught in a tension between the inclusion agenda and the education reform agenda (tighter curriculum control, the testing and inspection regimes, the pressure to improve ‘standards’, competition for pupils). There has been a shift of emphasis from some of the market principles that were enshrined in law in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But the pace of education reform has not slowed down, and in England key central features remain, such as aiming to improve standards by publishing assessment and inspection results and by encouraging competition for enrolment between schools. In these circumstances pupils with SEN may not be seen as an asset for a school, and it has been reported that the initial group of city academies refused to teach some children with statements of SEN even when named by the child’s education authority as the school best able to meet their needs (Slater 2004). The pessimism expressed by some of these commentators is to some extent countermanded by other observations about school trends. On the basis of research on school improvement and school effectiveness a number of investigators have pointed out that some of the factors that are found in schools that achieve general improvements in standards are also found in schools with a strong record for inclusion (Ainscow 1995). A large-scale study in England has shown that there is ‘a small, but for all practical purposes, insubstantial relationship between inclusion and academic achievement’ (Farrell et al. 2007: 131). The existence of considerable variation between schools suggested to the authors that there were other factors within the schools’ make-up, rather than just the proportion of children with SEN whom they included, that had had an impact on their pupils’ results. They concluded that ‘mainstream schools need not be concerned about the potentially negative impact on the overall academic achievements of their pupils of including pupils with SEN in their schools’. In a study that used a value-added measure to examine pupil progress within one local authority area, Rouse and Florian (2006) found no evidence that the presence of higher proportions of pupils with SEN in a school lowered the performance of other students in the school. They pointed out that ‘many staff in these schools believe that the strategies used by the school for including pupils with SEN contribute to improved achievement for all’ (2006: 491) In a detailed study of inclusive practices in 25 English schools, Ainscow et al. (2006b: 301) quoted teachers as reporting that they had had to develop the responsiveness of their schools to the characteristics of these students (i.e. those with SEN) in ways which promoted students’ engagement with learning and their sense of themselves as learners. While these actions would eventually be reflected in the measures for which they were held accountable by government, such holistic developments were, they suggested, valuable ‘for [their] own sake’, not simply as a means to an end.
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Principles and concepts
Activity 2.3
Collaboration between schools over pupils with SEN
The following extracts are adapted from a 1993 news report (Pyke 1993). A secondary school . . . has reneged on a 20 year agreement to take children from a nearby school for the partially sighted, according to the Royal National Institute for the Blind . . . For the past two decades the all-age JC School (which provides for pupils with visual impairment) has sent its pupils across the playing field to HP secondary for some lessons. A few partially sighted pupils have been fully integrated. But, after some changes in the governing body, HP is refusing to continue the arrangement unless it receives £26,000 from the LEA plus staff support from JC. The school says it cannot afford this and will have to send the pupils two miles to another secondary school. The RNIB added that HP has refused to integrate a wholly blind girl after a successful first year of partial integration. ‘The head told me that, irrespective of financial considerations, he did not believe it right to educate a wholly blind child in a mainstream school,’ said an RNIB spokesman. ‘Given this comment and the amount of money the school is charging to take the other, partially-sighted pupils, I can only conclude that the head doesn’t really want special needs children in the school.’ The LEA’s Chief Education Officer said: ‘Arrangements had worked up to this point, and it’s a great pity they are not working now.’ HP’s headteacher and the school’s chairman of governors both refused to comment. 1
On the basis of this report would you agree with a teacher from another secondary school who said that the working relationship between the schools ‘appears to be one-sided – not real collaboration’?
2
What features of the overall system might have led the headteachers of the two schools to adopt the positions attributed to them?
3
What changes in the law or in the approach of the LEA or the special school might lead the HP head to revise his view on the prospect of working with selected pupils from JC?
Multi-disciplinary teamwork within integrated children’s services SEN are complex and heterogeneous. It has been recognized for a long time that ‘meeting the special educational needs of children requires flexible working on the part of statutory agencies. They need to communicate and agree policies and protocols that ensure there is a “seamless” service’ (DfES 2001a: para. 10.1). Yet there have been many obstacles over the years to successful collaboration between colleagues from different disciplines. At an organizational level, ‘fragmentation of services between different statutory agencies, competition and tight budgets’ (DfEE 1997: 71) have been identified as key problems. At an individual level other factors may impede successful collaboration between professionals from different disciplines:
•
They have chosen to work in their field because it interests them and seems important to them. Such preconceptions are often reinforced during their training, so each professional may view the concerns of other groups as having lower priority.
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•
They are socialized during training to use a particular professional vocabulary.
• •
Differences in the use of language create problems of communication.
•
Tensions may develop between professional groups because of differences in perceived status, management arrangements or workload.
•
Some professional groups have strict codes of confidentiality which make it difficult to share records or information, even if the client agrees.
They often work for different agencies which are funded in different ways and have different priorities.
The greatest imaginable failure for children’s services must be when a child dies because of problems in the delivery of the support that they needed. A series of deaths of children at the hands of abusers from Maria Colwell in 1973 to Victoria Climbié in 2000 led to public inquiries that focused, among other things, on the need to ensure that ‘services to children and families are properly coordinated and that the inter-agency dimension of this work is being managed effectively’ (Laming 2003). Plans were already in place to address some of these issues, and urgent concern about what had happened to Climbié galvanized a political will to introduce radical reforms to children’s services in England under the slogan Every Child Matters. First, all agencies and services were to give priority to achieving five outcomes – that every child will:
•
be healthy – enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy lifestyle;
• •
stay safe – being protected from harm and abuse;
•
make a positive contribution – being involved with the community and society and not engaging in anti-social or offending behaviour;
•
achieve economic well-being – not being prevented by economic disadvantage from achieving their full potential in life (www.ecm.gov.uk).
enjoy and achieve – getting the most out of life and developing the skills for adulthood;
Second, clear guidance was issued on the sharing of information, outlining when information should be shared, for what purposes and how that can best be managed (www.ecm.gov.uk/informationsharing). Third, problems of communication about children’s needs and strengths were to be overcome by the use of a Common Assessment Framework (see Chapter 3). Finally, uncertainty about who should take a lead when a child has complex or additional needs was to be removed by requiring those involved to agree that one of them will take the role of lead professional (see below). Those initiatives are concerned with working practices, and it was recognized that they would only be successful if there were effective arrangements at the organizational level. Education and social services were restructured. Three main ways of organizing frontline multi-agency services were recommended (see Table 2.1). National inspection teams for education and social services were brought together within a single organization (DfES 2006b), and it was made clear that, when evaluating the leadership and the overall effectiveness of service
30
Principles and concepts Table 2.1
Ways of structuring frontline multi-agency services Example
Multi-agency panel
Members remain with their agency but meet regularly to discuss children with additional needs who would benefit from multi-agency input. Panel members might do case work or take a more strategic role.
Youth Inclusion and Support Panel (YISP)
Multi-agency team
Members are seconded or recruited into the team with a leader and common purpose and goals. They may still get supervision and training from their home agency, but have the opportunity to work with a range of different services.
Behaviour & Education Support Teams (BESTs) Youth Offending Teams (YOTs)
Integrated service
Different services such as health and education are co-located to form a highly visible hub in the community. Funded by the partner organisations and managed to ensure integrated working, they are often based in schools or early years settings.
Sure Start children’s centres and extended schools.
Source: www.ecm.gov.uk/multiagencyworking
providers, including schools, inspectors will consider the contribution the organization is making to all five of the target outcomes for children (Ofsted 2005b). The reforms built on what had been learned from earlier initiatives such as Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships and are in line with the recommendations for good practice listed by researchers such as Roaf (2002: 87) and Anning et al. (2006). It will be some years before it is possible to evaluate the effectiveness of these changes in terms of their supporting professional teams and individuals towards the achievement of the five outcomes for children. In the short term administrative reorganization inevitably diverts staff attention, at least temporarily, from their central tasks and leads to a preoccupation with concerns about ‘being taken over’ (Booker 2005). In the longer term the questions that will require close attention in each area include the following: • How effectively has preparatory work been carried out to clarify roles and responsibilities for service delivery within partner agencies and mainstream services (Robinson et al. 2005)?
•
Since the Common Assessment Framework had its conceptual basis in the Department of Health’s Framework for Assessment, it was necessary to introduce explicit references to learning and to education when it was adapted for a wider purpose. Will the Common Assessment Framework in its final form reflect all aspects of children’s experiences and capacities adequately (Booker 2005)?
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•
Will any improvements that appear be sustained over time? Clearly the inspection regime will help to ensure that they are, but studies of previous local initiatives have emphasized the need for an internal ‘systems minder’ to monitor and support such developments (Glenny 2005).
•
The starting point for the reforms is a concern with effective service delivery to individual children and families. How far will that emphasis prove compatible with a commitment to the kinds of changes in systems and provision that are required if we are to achieve a broader and deeper level of inclusion in education (Todd 2007)?
The reforms require considerable commitment and effort from all those involved. It is perhaps chastening to learn that, while those participating in some earlier initiatives saw many improvements emerging both for their clients and for themselves, they even so anticipated that the ultimate impact of multi-agency working on disabled children and their families would be quite limited (Abbott et al. 2005: 155). Activity 2.4
Drawing a successful multi-agency team
Glenny (2005) described three case studies of inter-agency support for local partnerships of schools. She noted: A key theme emerging from the case studies was that of control of the working environment. In the first case study everyone seemed to feel subject to forces outside their control and, as the researcher tracking down possible causes for this, I began to fancifully personify the force as a dragon: it was powerful, it demanded ritual sacrifice which might or might not appease, for example, the procedures for statutory assessment, and yet it was also mythical, because the agency (ability to act) must, in reality, surely be with the human players? So where does the agency lie? How had individuals lost this feeling of control and how might they recover it to enable them to collectively deliver effective services for children? (2005: 167) Imagine that a school or other organization that you know well is required to work in a coordinated way with another agency to meet children’s special educational needs more effectively. Draw a picture or a diagram of how it might be, and label it to show the features that you think would make effective cooperation difficult and those that would facilitate success. Remember it is the latter that are most important. You can use Glenny’s image of a dragon if you wish. But you might have other ideas.
3 Concepts of special educational needs
Objectives When you have studied this chapter you should be able to:
• • • •
define SEN and explain how they differ from other additional educational needs; evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of two major conceptualizations of SEN, with particular reference to a pluralistic perspective; consider the advantages and limitations of applying an interactional analysis to SEN; outline the key legislative requirements governing assessment and provision for pupils with SEN.
Contents Definitions
• • •
Additional educational needs Special educational needs SEN and AEN
Conceptualizations of SEN
• •
Focus on individual differences Focus on environmental demands
An interactional analysis
• • •
An interactional analysis of SEN An interactional analysis of AEN The relationship between SEN and AEN reconsidered
The legal context
• • •
The National Curriculum requirements The SEN Code of Practice Other relevant legislation and guidance
Conclusions
Concepts
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Definitions In the first section of this chapter we provide definitions of the terms ‘SEN’ and ‘additional educational needs’ (AEN). SEN refers to children’s learning needs in school. In Britain, as in many other countries, SEN is legally defined and this legal definition is used to decide whether particular children are eligible for special educational services. This will be the main focus of this chapter. ‘AEN’ has been used as an umbrella term to refer both to the needs of pupils with SEN and to the needs which may be experienced by pupils from particular social groups whose circumstances or background are different from most of the school population. In many ways it is the perception of difference that is central to all definitional approaches to these groups. It is argued that this gives rise to dilemmas – decision situations where each choice is associated with negative consequences or risks. These have been discussed in relation to SEN in particular by Norwich (2008). (For an analysis of paradoxes and dilemmas relating to intersecting differences in SEN, gender and ethnicity, see Artiles 2003.) Norwich (2008) describes the core dilemma as whether or not to recognize and respond to difference, highlighting that ‘either way there are some negative implications or risks associated with stigma, devaluation, rejection or denial of relevant and quality opportunities’ (2008: 1). In Activity 3.1 you have an opportunity to consider SEN dilemmas relating to identification, curriculum and location that have been used in international research studies. As you read this chapter you might want to record any other dilemmas you can identify.
Additional educational needs The needs of groups of children whose families are homeless or who speak a language at home which is not the language of instruction at school are often reflected in funding formulae, and are likely to require special consideration by their schools. However, individuals from groups which have AEN may or may not have SEN. This is apparent from the categorization which was developed from a national survey undertaken for the DfES in 2001 (Pricewaterhouse Coopers 2002) and is shown in Figure 3.1. Although the second category in Figure 3.1 refers to a number of disabilities, a disability may or may not result in a difficulty with learning. The Disability Rights Commission (2002: 28) notes that ‘Pupils may have either a disability or special educational needs or both’. While the SEN framework is concerned with provision to meet special educational needs, the disability discrimination requirements, which are discussed later in this chapter, are concerned with preventing discrimination in access to education. More recently the term ‘learning difficulties and disabilities’ (LDD), commonly used in further and higher education, has become more common in relation to school contexts. For example, in the Ofsted (2006: 21) report on inclusion LDD was used in place of SEN for the following reason: ‘The term LDD is used to cross the professional boundaries between education, health and social services and to incorporate a common language for 0–19 year olds. In the context of this report it replaces the term special educational needs’. This is a development which may sit uneasily with the interactionist conceptualization of SEN discussed later in this chapter.
34
Principles and concepts
Activity 3.1
The advantages and disadvantages of SEN labels
The following list shows the helpful and unhelpful aspects of the use of labels for SEN as described by Lauchlan and Boyle (2007): (i) Diagnosis, or a label, leads to treatment: A label is applied but there is a lack it opens doors for resources. consideration regarding the nature of intervention. (ii) Labelling leads to awareness raising and promotes understanding of particular difficulties.
Labelling leads to stigmatization.
(iii) Labels reduce ambiguities and provide clear communication devices for professional exchanges of information.
There is no clear agreement amongst professionals about how labels are decided. Moreover, labels lead to generalization of children’s difficulties, neglecting specific individualized issues.
(iv) Labels provide comfort to children and families by ‘explaining’ their difficulties.
Labelling leads to a focus on within-child deficits and possibly lowered expectations.
(v) Labels provide people with a social identity: a sense of belonging to a group.
Labelling can lead to teasing, bullying and low self-esteem.
Reflect on how far you think each of these considerations might apply if the following children were attending a primary or secondary school known to you: (a) Freddie (aged 7), who is socially isolated in his class and is seen by staff as ‘rather odd’, is diagnosed at a teaching hospital 80 miles away as having Asperger’s syndrome. (b) Sarah (aged 11) reads slowly, spells poorly and is badly organized in all her school work. Her response to additional help given during earlier years in primary school has been uneven. Her parents report to the school that an assessment by a private psychologist indicates that she has dyslexia. (c) Austin (aged 14) is constantly in trouble at school for inconsiderate and disruptive behaviour. His mother asks his form tutor to show greater understanding of his problems as he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (d) Maria (aged 3), who has Down’s syndrome, has help from a learning support assistant for 4 hours each day in the nursery school that she attends.
More recently also a distinction has been drawn between children with additional needs (including SEN) and those with complex needs (including severe and complex SEN), the distinction being based on the need for statutory involvement with individuals. The definition of additional needs in the Common Assessment Framework (see Figure 3.2) focuses on risk status in relation to the achievement of the five Every Child Matters outcomes requiring extra support. It is noteworthy that there is no mention here of EAL as an additional need. This relates to the position that provision for children learning EAL should be part of
Concepts
1. Learning need associated with English as an Additional Language (EAL) These children require extra support because their capability in English, as a result of it not being their first language, is not sufficient for them fully to access the curriculum. Support might include specialist English language teaching, individually or in groups, in-class support with reading and writing, perhaps provided by a bilingual assistant or a Teaching Assistant, and specific differentiation of lesson content and materials.
2. Particular identified SEN Children with a barrier to learning related to a particular identified special educational need such as autistic spectrum disorders, dyslexia, dyspraxia, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, speech and language difficulties, sensory impairment, physical disabilities. . . . Support might include specific differentiation of lesson content and materials, in-class support from a SENCO or Teaching Assistant, additional input in sessions where the pupil is withdrawn from the classroom, or provision of specialist equipment to allow full participation by the pupil.
3. Other learning need Children who require extra support because they are struggling to access the curriculum for some reason other than the two identified above. Provision might include in-class support from the SENCO or a Teaching Assistant, additional input in sessions where pupil is withdrawn from the classroom or specially differentiated tasks or materials.
4. Social need Children who require additional support in school for a variety of reasons associated with their home background and/or their emotional state including behavioural problems. Support may be provided for needs associated with family circumstances, poverty, truancy, traumatic experiences, emotional instability, behavioural difficulties, etc. Support might include activities designed to raise self-esteem or modify behaviour, input from a Learning Mentor, increased communication with family or other agencies, before- or after-school supervision, time spent counselling the pupil or their family, or additional adults in the classroom.
5. Learning need associated with English as an Additional Language and social need A combination of categories 1 and 4 above.
6. Particular identified SEN and social need A combination of categories 2 and 4 above.
7. Learning need associated with English as an Additional Language and particular identified SEN A combination of categories 1 and 2 above.
8. Learning need associated with English as an Additional Language and particular identified SEN and social need A combination of categories 1, 2 and 4 above
9. Other learning need and social need A combination of categories 3 and 4 above. Figure 3.1
Categories of additional educational needs
Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers (2002: 71–2).
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Principles and concepts
Children with additional needs: A broad term used to describe all those children at risk of poor outcomes in relation to the five outcome areas defined in Every Child Matters. An estimated 20% to 30% of children have additional needs at some point in their childhood, requiring extra support from education, health, social services or other services. This could be for a limited period, or on a long-term basis. It is the group for whom targeted support within universal settings will be most appropriate. Their needs will in many cases be cross-cutting and might include:
• • • • • • •
disruptive or anti-social behaviour; overt parental conflict or lack of parental support/boundaries; involvement in or risk of offending; poor attendance or exclusion from school; experiencing bullying; special educational needs; disabilities;
•
disengagement from education, training or employment post-16;
• • • • • •
poor nutrition; ill-health; substance misuse; anxiety or depression; housing issues; pregnancy and parenthood.
Children with complex needs: Of those children with additional needs, a small proportion have more significant or complex needs which meet the threshold for statutory involvement:
• • • • • • • •
children who are the subject of a child protection plan; looked after children; care leavers; children for whom adoption is the plan; children with severe and complex special educational needs; children with complex disabilities or complex health needs; children diagnosed with significant mental health problems; young offenders involved with youth justice services (community and custodial).
Figure 3.2
Common Assessment Framework: guidance on terms
Source: DfES (2006f ).
universal provision available in all schools, supplemented by the additional funding available to schools from the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant. As part of this focus on enabling frontline services to meet the needs of children from minority ethnic groups, extensive guidance and training materials have been provided for schools on implementing the primary national strategy with bilingual learners (DfES 2006a). The materials are intended to support all staff in personalizing learning to ensure that every child achieves the highest possible standards and that no group is discriminated against, and specifically to:
Concepts
37
•
understand and apply the key principles of EAL pedagogy in their daily practice;
•
understand the opportunities afforded by the broad curriculum for the development of the additional language;
•
explore learning and teaching approaches, including bilingual strategies and the use of ICT, which facilitate access to the curriculum and additional language development for children learning EAL;
•
provide conditions for learning which value diversity and promote confidence and a sense of belonging;
•
develop effective partnerships with parents, carers, families and communities. The member of the leadership team responsible for coordinating provision for EAL will play a critical role in developing and supporting staff expertise and understanding of EAL pedagogy and the use of bilingual strategies in schools. (DfES 2006a: 13)
In addition, schools are expected to provide strong leadership in this area through the identification of a member of the leadership team responsible for coordinating provision for EAL who can develop staff understanding of EAL pedagogy and support their use of bilingual strategies. Arguably the most inclusive of the various terms currently in use is that used in Scotland, ‘additional support needs’ (ASN). These are defined in paragraph 1 of the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 as follows: (1) A child or young person has additional support needs for the purposes of this Act where, for whatever reason, the child or young person is, or is likely to be, unable without the provision of additional support to benefit from school education provided or to be provided for the child or young person. . . . (3) In this Act, ‘additional support’ means – (a) in relation to a prescribed pre-school child, a child of school age or a young person receiving school education, provision which is additional to, or otherwise different from, the educational provision made generally for children or, as the case may be, young persons of the same age in schools (other than special schools) under the management of the education authority for the area to which the child or young person belongs . . . The inclusiveness of the new term ‘ASN’ and its differentiation from SEN is explicated in the summary handout provided by the Scottish Executive Education Department (2004): The definition of ‘special educational needs’ traditionally only applies to children and young people with particular types of learning needs. The new concept of ‘additional support needs’ refers to any child or young person who, for whatever reason, requires additional support for learning. Add-
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Principles and concepts itional support needs can arise from any factor which causes a barrier to learning, whether that factor relates to social, emotional, cognitive, linguistic, disability, or family and care circumstances. For instance, additional support may be required for a child or young person who is being bullied; has behavioural difficulties; has learning difficulties; is a parent; has a sensory or mobility impairment; is at risk; or is bereaved. There will be many other examples besides these. Some additional support needs will be long term while others will be short term. The effect they have will vary from child to child. In all cases though, it is how these factors impact on the individual child’s learning that is important and this will determine the level of support required. The clarity and inclusiveness of the ASN concept presents a contrast to the current situation in England where the use of the term AEN, as we have seen, is rather confusingly used in subtly different ways by different bodies and in different initiatives.
Special educational needs The past 25–30 years have seen parallel shifts in the UK and the USA in the concept of SEN and the legal framework surrounding its assessment. In the UK, SEN was introduced as a legally defined term by the Education Act 1981, following the advice of the Warnock Report (DES 1978). Prior to 1981 the focus was very much on identifying and making provision for handicapped individuals. There were 12 recognized categories of disability: blind, partially sighted, deaf, partially deaf, physically handicapped, delicate, educationally subnormal (moderate), educationally subnormal (severe), epileptic, maladjusted, speech defects, and autistic. The Warnock Report recommended that the statutory categories of disabled pupils should be abolished and instead children who required special educational provision should be identified on the basis of a detailed profile of their needs following assessment. This change was recommended for a number of reasons. For example, it was recognized that:
•
children often experienced a range of difficulties which meant they could not be fitted neatly into the categories listed above;
•
children assigned to the same category of disability may have varied needs in terms of teaching approaches, classroom management, etc.;
•
particular children in different categories may have the same educational needs.
The implementation of the Education Act 1981 shifted the purpose of assessment from the diagnosis of disability to the identification of SEN. Figure 3.3 shows the definition of SEN introduced in the Education Act 1981 and maintained in subsequent legislation. It can be seen that the level of need experienced is understood to be the result of a complex interaction between the child’s strengths and weaknesses, the level of support available and the appropriateness of the education being provided.
Concepts
39
A child has special educational needs if he or she has a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her. A child has a learning difficulty if he or she: (a) has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of the same age (b) has a disability which either prevents or hinders the child from making use of educational facilities of a kind provided for children of the same age in schools within the area of the local education authority (c) is under five and falls within the definition at (a) or (b) above or would do if special educational provision was not made for the child. A child must not be regarded as having a learning difficulty solely because the language or form of language of the home is different from the language in which he or she is or will be taught. Special educational provision means: (a) for a child over two, educational provision which is additional to or otherwise different from, the educational provision made generally for children of the child’s age in maintained schools, other than special schools in the area. (b) for a child under two, educational provision of any kind. Figure 3.3
Legal definition of SEN
Source: Education Act 1996, section 312.
In legal terms, according to the Education Acts of 1981 and 1996, children are said to have SEN if they require special educational provision because they have a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of their age or because they suffer from a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of the educational facilities generally provided for children of their age. In the USA legislation on SEN in the last quarter of the twentieth century also emphasized meeting the individual needs of children and focused on the provision of a match between these needs and the education offered. For example, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 1997 defines a student as having a disability if he or she requires ‘special education’ – defined as ‘specially designed instruction’. However, in the USA categories of special educational needs were maintained, although they might be defined differently by different states, notwithstanding the availability of national definitions. In the UK initially the SEN approach was generally welcomed as an improvement on the ‘categories of handicap’ approach which it replaced. However, a number of criticisms were raised. The interrelationship between needs and provision embodied in these legal definitions of SEN, where one is defined with reference to the other, was criticized as circular by Goacher et al. (1988) in relation to the British Education Act 1981 and by Zigmond and Baker (1995) in relation to the US Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 1997.
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Principles and concepts More radically, Tomlinson (1982: 173–4) suggested that the real needs being served by this approach are the needs of dominant power interests in society, rather than those of children who experience difficulties in school, in that: state special education developed and took the forms it did to cater for children who had been categorized out of the normal education that was offered to the majority of children and that its development had more to do with the ‘needs’ of an industrialized society which was endeavoring to produce and train a stable, docile, productive workforce, than with the ‘needs’ of individual children. The smooth running of normal schools and, latterly, their examination-orientated, credentialling functions were impeded by troublesome children who could not, or would not, conform to the requirements of schools, particularly in terms of learning capabilities and appropriate behaviour. Humanitarian ideologies and Christian reformist principles were used to rationalize the removal of the defective, handicapped, or those in need to a special education sector which has expanded continuously. It has to be acknowledged that categories of SEN have continued to be used over the last 25 years in the designation of special schools, in local authorities and in schools (Wedell 2003), albeit in a subsidiary role to the concept of SEN. The Audit Commission (2002a) found that many LEAs held detailed information on the needs of pupils in their area, but this could not be aggregated regionally or nationally because of a lack of consistency in the categories used and their definition. A new focus on strategic planning based on audit and on stratified analyses of progress achieved by vulnerable pupils led the DfES to amend the Pupil Level Annual School Census return required from schools in 2004 to include the 12 categories of SEN used by Ofsted (and shown in Figure 3.4). A number of concerns have been expressed about this development, both at a conceptual level and in relation to the validity of the data obtained. Gray (2004) reported that schools involved in a pilot found it difficult to assign pupils to categories with any degree of confidence. Florian et al. (2004) pointed out that SEN are changeable and very often context-specific, expressing concern that the change may herald a return to within-child conceptualizations of SEN. However, others have advanced a different view. Warnock (2005) described the original decision to abandon categories as ‘a baneful one’, elaborating as follows: If children’s needs are to be assessed in public discussion and met by public expenditure it is absolutely necessary to have ways of identifying not only what is needed but also why (by virtue of what condition or disability) it is needed. It is essential, furthermore, to distinguish needs that radically differ from one another, arising from different disabilities. (Warnock 2005: 21) SEN and AEN This distinction is recognized in one respect in the legislation on special SEN: ‘A child must not be regarded as having a learning difficulty solely because the language or medium of communication of the home is different from the language in which he or she is or will be taught’ (Education Act 1996, section 312). The fact
Concepts
41
A. Cognition and learning needs
• • • •
Specific learning difficulty (SpLD) 7.0% Moderate learning difficulty (MLD) 22.2% Severe learning difficulty (SLD) 12.1% Profound and multiple learning difficulty (PMLD) 3.7%
B. Behaviour, emotional and social development needs
•
Behaviour, emotional and social difficulty (BESD) 14.3%
C. Communication and interaction needs
• •
Speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) 12.0% Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) 14.6%
D. Sensory and/or physical needs
• • • •
Visual impairment (VI) 1.8% Hearing impairment (HI) 3.0% Multi-sensory impairment (MSI) 0.2% Physical disability (PD) 7.2%
E. Other
•
Other difficulty/disability (OD/D) 1.8%
Figure 3.4 Percentage of pupils with statements of SEN by primary type of need in England, January 2007 Source: DCSF (2007c).
that this distinction is specifically highlighted reflects the particular problems that can arise where there is confusion between these concepts:
•
low expectations of children from ethnic and linguistic minorities may result;
• •
discrimination against such groups may be fostered; provision of the most appropriate educational support may be hampered.
As one aspect of school improvement and a commitment to raising attainment, guidance to schools promotes the need to appraise and address AEN. This is apparent in relation to bilingual pupils (DfES 2006a). The extended schools initiative (DCSF 2007a) represents a further example with particular relevance to social disadvantage. It has long been known that during the summer holidays the achievement test scores of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds decline. The organization of summer schools and play schemes which have a literacy component has been advocated for ameliorating the effect of poverty on educational achievement in literacy (Cox and Jones 1983).
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Principles and concepts
Activity 3.2 1.
AEN and SEN
Consider the brief case descriptions in the table below. Can you identify any SEN and AEN suggested by the descriptions?
Description
SEN
AEN
Antonio (aged 8) has arrived recently from Spain after his father moved to the UK for work. He has a hearing difficulty and has learned little English so far. Jane (aged 14) is depressed, very dependent on her mother and cannot bring herself to get up and leave home in the morning in order to attend school. Louisa (aged 10) comes from a small local Travellers’ community. Her school attendance is irregular and she is well behind her peers in the development of basic reading and writing skills.
2.
It is often claimed that there may be undesirable consequences if the terms ‘SEN’ and ‘AEN’ are confused. Reflecting on this Activity, or drawing on examples from your own experience, can you identify ways in which confusion between these two concepts may lead to low expectations of children, or to discrimination, or to poor teaching?
Conceptualizations of SEN There are two conceptualizations of the nature of SEN which are often compared and contrasted. We first describe the view that SEN are best understood by looking at individual differences between children. We then describe an alternative approach which argues that SEN arise when inappropriate environmental demands are placed on an individual which exceed their current capabilities for meeting those demands. These two approaches are illustrated through the case study of Majid (see Activity 3.3). Throughout it will be important for you to consider the sociopolitical context within which the conceptualization of SEN takes place and to ask questions such as ‘What is the purpose of defining SEN?’ and ‘Whose definition of “normality” or “ordinariness” is being used in identifying an individual as special?’. Focus on individual differences In this conceptualization the focus of causation is within the child. This was the view embodied in legislation prior to 1981. The focus in the Education Act 1944 was on ‘disability of mind or body’. Individual differences may be considered in a number of domains: biological (e.g. profound hearing loss, cerebral palsy); behavioural (e.g. the length of time the pupil can stay engaged in learning activities); or cognitive (e.g. poorly developed phonological skills, low selfesteem). Factors external to the individual (e.g. quality of teaching) are not
Concepts
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considered. Issue has been taken with this approach for a variety of reasons. A number of key issues to consider are outlined below:
•
A focus on individual needs is often based on untested assumptions. Solity (1993) outlines a number of such assumptions. For example, it is often assumed that children have had appropriate learning opportunities; that their learning experiences have been appropriately matched to their needs; that the teaching available has been effective with their peers but not with them; and that the discrepancy cannot be attributed to starting school with lower attainments than peers or to widely differing preschool experiences.
•
Social and educational contexts are important. The Special Educational Needs Code of Practice (DfES 2001a: 20) makes this point: It should be recognised that some difficulties in learning may be caused or exacerbated by the school’s learning environment or adult/child relationships. This means looking carefully at such matters as classroom organisation, teaching materials, teaching style and differentiation in order to decide how these can be developed so that the child is enabled to learn effectively.
•
Where the educational context contributes to the problem, focusing on the individual will not make a broader contribution to improving the context. Dyson (1990) argued that the education system is not equally favourable to every child who participates in it and urged that instead of asking how education can change the individual, we should be asking how the education system itself can be changed to accommodate the characteristics of all children, regardless of the degree to which they are atypical. Ainscow (1995) noted a growing recognition that the special needs agenda should be seen as an essential element in the drive towards effective education for all. On this view, those seen as having SEN are regarded as a stimulus that can encourage developments towards a much richer overall environment for learning.
Focus on environmental demands This approach is situation-centred, rather than person-centred. Proponents hold that SEN ‘can only be defined in terms of the relationship between what a person can do and what a person must do to succeed in a given environment’ (Deno 1989: 5). Solity (1996b) presents a view that low attainments do not imply a learning difficulty. Rather, children’s current attainments are held to reflect the nature and quality of previous learning experiences, and children will learn when taught appropriately. At one extreme, then, the environmentally focused approach holds that there are no children with learning difficulties, only adults with teaching difficulties. While a range of influences are acknowledged, it is typically argued that the most pervasive cause of learning difficulties is that for some children ‘the curriculum moves too fast and demands too much in relation to their existing skills. They get further and further behind and are entrenched in a failure cycle’ (Gickling and Havertape 1981: 376). The majority of school-related problems are therefore regarded as being curriculum-induced. It must be acknowledged that attributing learning failure to factors such as poor classroom organization, ineffective teaching strategies or inadequate match between task requirements and
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Principles and concepts learner skills at least serves to emphasize the power of the teacher in influencing educational outcomes. This is more likely to stimulate action to help the pupil than an attitude that locates the cause ‘within the child’. Parallels can be drawn with the conceptualization of disability as a source of additional support needs, but not necessarily SEN. Here a focus on environmental demands leads to an analysis of disabling environments and hostile social attitudes, rather than individuals and their different functioning and abilities, which may be played down or even denied (Barnes 1996). Wheelchair users would not be seen as people with a mobility problem. Instead they would be seen as people whose mobility is often hampered by inappropriate building design. Looked at in this way the individual’s ‘problem’ is that they are discriminated against in terms of access. Two key issues to consider are outlined below:
•
Individual differences matter too: different children will respond to teaching in different ways. A focus on environmental demands attends only to features of the situation and ignores a child’s characteristics that may be useful in explaining why they can or cannot perform. Frederickson et al. (1991) criticize the view that ‘if a child can’t read it doesn’t matter why they can’t read, what they need is to be taught to read’. This is problematic because once one moves on to asking how a child should be taught to read then an understanding of the particular nature of their difficulties, their areas of relative strength, their attitudes and interests becomes important. In eschewing individual differences, an environmentally focused approach also fails to account for variability, for the remarkable resilience of many children to learn in spite of teaching which is less than adequate, as well as the remarkable persistence of some children’s difficulties in learning despite dedicated and skilful teaching.
•
‘Within-child’ factors can be influenced by teachers. The argument that a focus on environmental factors is justified on pragmatic grounds because it encourages the view that teachers can affect outcomes would only be compelling if within-child factors could not be influenced by teachers. However, it is not the case that nothing can be done about ‘within-child’ factors. To take one example, in Chapter 13 we review recent research which demonstrates that intensive effective reading programmes can change brain functioning.
An interactional analysis An interactional analysis of SEN An interactional analysis views the level of need as the result of a complex interaction between the child’s strengths and weaknesses, the level of support available and the appropriateness of the education being provided. There is widespread support for this view and for the view that neither individually nor environmentally focused conceptualizations are adequate on their own. Tomlinson (1982: 22) urged that neither ‘fatalistic psychological views of individual causality [nor] simple sociological views of environmental determinism’ should go unchallenged. Gutierrez and Stone (1997), in discussing a cultural-historical view of learning and learning disabilities, argued that attention must be given to environmental in addition to individual variables, not instead of them.
Concepts
Activity 3.3
Case study: Majid
Read the following case study and prepare to take part in a debate. If you have the opportunity to work with a colleague, one of you can prepare notes on (a) below and the other on (b). You can then actually have a debate, where each person argues their case. (a) Prepare notes on the following case study that will enable you to present the argument that Majid’s SEN can best be understood and addressed by adopting a focus on the individual. (b) Prepare notes on the following case study that will enable you to present the argument that Majid’s SEN can best be understood and addressed by adopting a focus on the classroom environment. For the purposes of this activity be sure to focus on SEN rather than other additional needs (see the previous section for a discussion of this distinction). Majid (9 years) is causing concern in Flaxfield Primary School due to his low attainments and generally poor progress. In the playground he joins in playing football happily, but in class his teacher describes him as being in a world of his own. He doesn’t seem able to follow instructions given to the whole class, although he will usually try to do what the other children are doing. If the task is explained again to him individually he will sometimes seem to understand and be able to complete it. However, in many cases he just doesn’t seem to have the basic skills that would allow him to tackle the Year 5 curriculum successfully. Majid attended a nursery school for one year and then transferred to Collington Primary School for a short time before going with his mother to live in Pakistan for 18 months. He attended school while in Pakistan, where his mother said he had some problems too, and returned to England in the middle of Year 4, when he joined his current school. Majid speaks Punjabi and English at home. His mother has expressed some concerns about his proficiency in Punjabi but considers that Majid is more competent speaking Punjabi than English. A bilingual assessment was completed six months after he started at his present school. It was reported that Majid answered most questions in English and did not talk with confidence in either language. Majid’s parents reported that he has had a lot of problems with his ears. He used to wake up at night in pain, he had constant ear infections and headaches and lost his appetite. Majid had grommets put in both ears about six months after he returned to England and his parents feel they have made a difference. Majid now turns around quickly when his name is called and is more attentive at home. Majid’s teacher had not noticed much difference in the classroom but did say that Majid’s attendance had improved as he used to have quite frequent absences with ear infections. One lesson where Majid is doing better in school is in the Literacy Hour. His primary school sets the pupils in each year group. Majid is in the lowest set which is taught by the school’s SEN coordinator, supported by a teaching assistant. During the 15 minutes devoted to shared reading and writing at the start of the session the teaching assistant sits with Majid’s table. She prompts attention, checks understanding and provides additional explanation as necessary. She reminds the group about work they have covered and encourages their participation. She also works with the group on catch-up programmes focused on objectives at earlier levels that they have not yet achieved.
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Principles and concepts An interactional position has been acknowledged in government guidance in the UK for almost two decades. Assessments and Statements of Special Educational Needs: Procedures within the Education, Health and Social Services (DES 1989a: para. 17) stated: The extent to which a learning difficulty hinders a child’s development does not depend solely on the nature and severity of that difficulty. Other significant factors include the personal resources and attributes of the child as well as the help and support provided at home and the provision made by the school and the LEA and other statutory and voluntary agencies. A child’s special educational needs are thus related both to abilities and disabilities, and to the nature and extent of the interaction of these with his or her environment. A similar view was embedded in the National Curriculum from the outset: ‘Special educational needs are not just a reflection of pupil’s inherent difficulties or disabilities; they are often related to factors within schools which can prevent or exacerbate problems’ (National Curriculum Council 1989a: para. 5). An interactional conceptualization is also explicit in the UK government’s current strategy for SEN: Difficulties in learning often arise from an unsuitable environment – inappropriate grouping of pupils, inflexible teaching styles, or inaccessible curriculum materials – as much as from individual children’s physical, sensory or cognitive impairments. Children’s emotional and mental health needs may also have a significant impact on their ability to make the most of the opportunities in school, as may family circumstances. We are committed to removing the barriers to learning that many children encounter in school. (DfES 2004c: 28) However, despite the fact that an interactional approach has been widely espoused and advocated, it cannot necessarily be assumed that it is widely implemented in practice. In discussing the operation of the Education Act 1981, Goacher et al. (1988: 149) argued: though the definition proposes an interactive view of children’s needs, the implications for the terms in which assessments of needs are made do not seem to have been grasped by many of those involved. Most of the Statements which we have seen in the course of our research concentrated their attention on deficits within the child which led to special needs, with very little attention given to the child’s environment, whether at home or at school. How true is this today? As you read accounts of practice in this book and elsewhere, consider the extent to which they reflect an interactional conceptualization of SEN. You may find more examples of individually focused or environmentally focused approaches than you expect. Activity 3.4 provides an opportunity to examine professional advice for evidence of individually focused, environmentally focused or interactional orientations. If you are working with one or more children who have SEN statements you might want to look instead, or as well, at the professional advice appended to them.
Concepts
Activity 3.4
Extracts from professional advice about SEN
Below you will find extracts from the professional advice that was attached to the statements of SEN prepared for two quite different children. Can you identify phrases and sentences that: (a) focus on the individual; (b) focus on environmental demands; or (c) are based on an interactional analysis of the child’s difficulties? You may find it helpful to tackle this activity with a partner. Make two copies of this activity and start by working independently. You could each underline what you judge to be (a), (b) and (c) in different colours. Then compare your judgements and, where there are discrepancies, discuss why you each thought what you did. Can you reach a consensus on all the judgements in the end?
John (aged 7) Extracts from a joint report by the headteacher and class teacher John is a physically fit and healthy boy. He is tall for his age and derives pleasure from PE (physical education) activities especially when his height gives him an advantage. He generally works and behaves well both in and out of the classroom, he loves PE, games and using the computer. He attends school regularly. Within the classroom he can be particularly tense when faced with a reading or writing task. He does try his best, but his performance is well below average for his age. At the end of Key Stage 1 his SAT (Standard Assessment Task) scores were all at Level 1, apart from science which was at Level 2. Despite a great deal of work during the Literacy Hour his knowledge of phonics is very weak, and his written letters, particularly p, d, b, are often confused. He still has difficulty remembering many letter sounds, and where he recognizes a letter he will often give the letter name rather than the sound. His unaided written work is now becoming more extensive, but it is still very difficult to understand, and even harder for him to read back. John can spell correctly a few key words and some two- or three-letter words (notably some of the words that are featured in a large display of ‘Words we often need’ that hangs across the top of the classroom wall above the teacher’s desk). When this display was taken down during a test, he made serious errors in words that he has often spelled correctly in the past. In mathematics John is a little more confident in his approach despite his performance being below average. In a secure, friendly atmosphere John responds well, especially when following predictable tasks. In a changing, unfamiliar situation he quickly becomes unsure of himself and looks to others for help. When reassurance and support are quickly available he can usually tackle the task with some success. Otherwise, he tends to become anxious and tearful and unwilling to attempt the task. His approach to learning and his attitude to language work in particular have improved recently, perhaps because of the amount of schoolbased support that is offered. However, he remains characteristically nervous and tense about his own performance. When he does a good piece of work and receives praise, he is reluctant to appreciate that the work is good.
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Principles and concepts
John’s needs are extensively related to his language development and his selfconcept. He needs to improve reading and writing skills and to value himself more. He has a particularly weak memory for letter shapes, sounds and spelling. He has made most progress when given regular daily individual attention following a structured language programme in which he is required to over-learn everything. It is through this regular individual attention that some words have stayed in his memory. John will require a greater access than other children to the computer, concept keyboard and simple word games.
Peter (aged 6) Extracts from an educational psychologist’s report I have been involved with Peter for three years since he was in day nursery. The staff there and his mother, Ms T, were finding it extremely difficult to manage Peter’s behaviour. They reported that he was ‘defiant’, ‘uncooperative in most adult-directed activities’, and ‘very distractible’. They felt that his short attention span and difficult behaviour were ‘beginning to interfere with his general development and in particular with his learning’. My most recent involvement with him began this year when he was referred by his school. He had started in a small class of 19 children but found it difficult to settle. His class teacher, Miss F, was concerned about his ‘over-activity’ from the outset and about his problem of concentration. She said that he seemed not to have difficulties understanding any of the work given, but that he rarely remained on task for more than one to two minutes. We discussed a reward system which involved gradually extending the length of time which Peter was required to be on task. Rewards included time on the computer (which Peter really valued) and extra time with Miss F (which proved to be quite difficult to implement because of the lack of any regular extra help in the classroom). Peter’s progress was not consistent in that sometimes he remained in his seat and on task for the required length of time, but at other times he had difficulties doing so. Much seemed to depend on which other children were working at his table and whether they reacted to him in a way that calmed or provoked him. In addition, Miss F reported that his behaviour had rapidly deteriorated to include bad language, disobeying of instructions, fighting with other children, and ‘high’/excited behaviour (e.g. screaming, ‘karate’ movements, etc.) in the playground. A meeting was held in November with the headteacher, the class teacher, Miss F, and Peter’s mother. We discussed a range of strategies for addressing Peter’s behaviour. These included:
• •
the continuation of the reward system for on-task behaviour;
•
removing him (temporarily) from the playground or from one area of the classroom to another when conflict occurred or when he used bad language;
•
planning activities in such a way as to try to minimize the possibility of conflict (e.g. placing him beside quiet children, making sure that he fully understood what he was required to do, etc.);
explaining to Peter (and reminding him of) what was acceptable and unacceptable behaviour both within the classroom and in the playground;
Concepts
•
establishing more regular liaison between his mother and the class teacher (i.e. every 1–2 days); and
•
awarding him certificates for demonstrated effort to behave or to work well.
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In January Miss F left, and over the following six months Peter’s class had three changes of teacher. A number of supply teachers were also needed for various periods of time. A further 11 children joined the class, and a primary helper began to work in the classroom in the mornings. Peter’s behaviour continued to cause concern, but it proved difficult to implement a consistent programme of behaviour management because of the high turnover of teachers. There were a number of other children in the class whose behaviour caused concern, including one child who was permanently excluded from the school. Peter was suspended for three days in May because of aggressive behaviour towards another child (i.e. grabbing the child’s hair and pulling them off their chair). Strategies implemented by the various teachers in an attempt to manage Peter’s behaviour included: praise for positive behaviour; giving stars for good work, effort or behaviour; reminding Peter to work and play nicely; giving him responsibilities (e.g. to distribute worksheets); allowing him to take toys home; encouraging him to bring in work, drawings and models which he had completed at home; allowing him to stay at his desk doing drawing during story time; rewarding him with time on the computer working with another child; certificates/letters home; ‘time out’ in other classes; working on his own in a corner of the classroom or close to the teacher; working with ‘quiet’ children; working with the primary helper outside the classroom; noting down his positive and negative behaviours in a ‘behaviour book’; and asking Ms T to come into school to work with him in the classroom and to accompany the class on trips. It would appear from speaking to teachers and to Ms T that the most successful of these in terms of Peter producing work and not getting into trouble were the strategies that minimized distractions – that is, those which involved him working on his own or with an adult either within or outside the classroom. Ms T felt that a major deciding factor in Peter’s behaviour was his perception of how the teacher viewed him – whether he felt she ‘liked’ him and treated him in a ‘fair’ manner, and whether she showed by her behaviour that she valued him as an important member of the class.
An interactional analysis of AEN In just the same way that the level of SEN experienced by an individual will depend on the responsiveness of the educational environment, so too will this influence the level of special needs experienced by particular groups. For example, the classroom is a unique context that requires special language and interactive skills, some patterns of which may be shared in home and community settings and some of which may not. Whether children are judged to have adequate levels of communicative competence in the classroom will depend both on the opportunities which they have had to develop relevant skills in other contexts and on how classroom events are organized to enable or disable their participation. Children who have attended a well-structured playgroup may initially be more responsive to the style of teacher communication used in their Reception
50
Principles and concepts class than children who have started school from home without experience in a preschool setting. The clearer the expectations and the more predictable the Reception class routines, the more quickly children without preschool experience are likely to learn about how to respond and communicate successfully in the Reception class. The context profoundly affects behaviour, and that behaviour cannot be interpreted without taking into account situational factors. Cummins (1989: 111) argued that academic difficulties may be partially due to the reinforcement by schools of ‘the ambivalence and insecurity that many minority students tend to feel with regard to their own cultural identity’. Pupils may become ‘disabled’ in a manner similar to that experienced by their ethnic communities as they become disempowered or ‘disabled’ by the dominant group Cummins (2000) identified three overlapping dimensions along which the attributes important to school effectiveness for pupils with EAL can be located. These are:
• • •
coherent school organization and leadership; affirmation of student and community identity; pedagogy – balance between meaning-focused approaches designed to promote problem-solving and higher-order thinking and explicit formal instruction designed to develop linguistic and meta-cognitive awareness.
It is argued that minority students can be empowered to the extent that patterns of interaction in school promote their confidence in their personal identity and ability to succeed academically. Keogh et al. (1997) highlight some of the dilemmas involved in attempting to take account of cultural and ethnic diversity in education. They argue that ‘on one level the issue is simple: everyone’s heritage is due respect and the ideal is to find strength in diversity and to capitalise on rather then stigmatise difference’ (1997: 109). However, there is often an unrecognized paradox in well-intentioned efforts to be sensitive to diversity in that individuals may be stereotyped and treated as if they share common traits with all others of a similar background. Ethnic group differences are often treated as markers of cultural differences, but this is usually an oversimplification. It is important to appreciate the social and cultural differences that may exist within groups that share the same cultural background. Ethnic identity tends to persist though time, whereas culture changes as individuals and groups modify beliefs and practices over time. Consider the differences which may be observed between the lifestyles, expectations and values of new immigrants and those of the second generation to be born in the UK. Keogh et al. (1997) therefore argue for carefully distinguishing between ethnicity and culture in educational practice, which allows acknowledgement of variation at three levels: between ethnically defined groups; within ethnically defined groups; and between individuals within ethnic and cultural groups. The issues of group empowerment and group ‘disability’ analysed by Cummins (2000) and the concerns about group stereotyping highlighted by Keogh et al. (1997) arise in their most intense form when there are racial differences between groups that parallel (or partly parallel) ethnic and/or cultural differences. Racism is a key factor. In this book we will employ a simple educational frame-
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51
work incorporating three perspectives on racism (Inner London Education Authority 1983). These perspectives were seen as developmental in character, the first being the earliest observed in the British education service and the last being the perspective to which the Authority aspired. The implication was that the three perspectives were mutually exclusive. In fact, in most contexts they are likely to overlap to a considerable degree: each is a matter of emphasis, not a separate and exclusive category. The three perspectives highlighted in the model are illustrated in Table 3.1. Much has changed in the last 26 years, in particular with regard to legislation
Table 3.1
Three perspectives on racism
Perspective on racism
Statements of education policy
Emphasizing mainly assimilation
School curricula should help black settlement by reflecting British traditions, history, customs and culture. The first priority for black people is to learn and speak good English. Race relations are by and large good. It is counter-productive to try to improve them too fast. The main problems are caused by extreme right-wing groups. Racial and cultural differences should not be exacerbated by drawing attention to them.
Emphasizing mainly cultural diversity
Teaching about various cultures will promote a positive self-image among black people and tolerance and sympathetic understanding among white people. Educational establishments should make greater efforts to explain their policies and practices to black parents. Community languages besides English should be valued positively by schools. Bilingualism should be encouraged.
Emphasizing primarily equality
Black perspectives on world history should be introduced on an equal basis. Racism has a central and pervasive influence on all social systems. There should be continuous monitoring of policies and provision. Positive action is required on employment and appointments. Removing discrimination against black people should have a higher priority.
Source: Adapted from Inner London Education Authority (1983).
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Principles and concepts and central government guidance. Schools have statutory duties under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000) to:
• • •
provide equality of opportunity; tackle unlawful racial discrimination; promote good relations between members of different ethnic communities.
Extensive guidance and materials have been produced under the aegis of the Primary National Strategy (DfES 2006a) to support improvement in schools where raising the achievement of children learning EAL is a priority. Aiming High, the government’s strategy for raising the achievement of pupils from minority ethnic groups (DfES 2003a), argues that the needs of minority ethnic pupils should be seen as an integral part of all mainstream policies and programmes, rather than simply an add-on. Nevertheless it addresses directly poorer than average public examination results from black pupils and those from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds. It is also examines contributing factors from poverty to low teacher expectations and institutional racism. Activity 3.5
Effective schools for children from minority ethnic groups
The features listed below have been identified as characteristics of schools which have successfully implemented strategies to raise the achievement of children from minority ethnic groups (DfES 2006a: 8–9). (a) Examine each item and consider whether it appears to be informed by one of the three perspectives on racism. (b) Comment on the distribution of the items across the perspectives and on any ways in which you feel the perspectives might be developed further. (c) Think about two schools you know where you consider different perspectives on racism predominate. Identify the main features on which they differ.
•
leadership and management which demonstrates: – a strong and determined lead on race equality; – evaluation-led improvement; – development of the school as a professional learning community which recognises the benefits of collaboration; – a focus on data collected and analysed by ethnicity, gender and first language; – ambitious targets for attainment and achievement; – data used to inform effective use of resources;
•
an approach to learning and teaching which demonstrates: – a curriculum which is broad and rich, inclusive and relevant; – high reliability in teaching the core subjects; – a clear focus for developing language across the curriculum;
Concepts
– appropriately scaffolded opportunities;
and
cognitively
demanding
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learning
– effective use of assessment for learning; – effective use of specialist expertise within the classroom; – use of children’s linguistic, cultural and ethnic heritages to enhance learning;
•
a culture and ethos within which the following are demonstrable: – everyone feels safe and valued; – a commitment to tackling underachievement and achieving high standards for all; – linguistic, cultural, religious and ethnic diversity are valued and celebrated. Diversity is seen as an opportunity, not a reason for underachievement; – practitioners have high expectations of children and encourage them to have high expectations of themselves; – children are encouraged to believe in themselves and take responsibility for their learning; – parents, carers and families are seen as partners and actively involved in their children’s learning.
The relationship between SEN and AEN reconsidered While we have taken care to draw a distinction between SEN and additional education/support needs, it follows that if SEN arise from an interaction between the child’s difficulties and the educational environment in which they are placed, then assessing children’s SEN must involve a detailed analysis of their learning environments. To take a single example of a group with additional needs (children from a linguistic minority), one of the key elements in their performance in school will be the ethnic and language background of the pupil population of the school. Another will be the attitudes, skills and resources of the staff. The Warnock Committee (DES 1978: 64) argued that ‘any tendency for educational difficulties to be assessed without proper reference to a child’s cultural and ethnic background and its effect on his education can result in a category of handicap becoming correlated with a particular group in society’. As there is evidence that certain groups in society are over-represented in particular forms of SEN provision, does this mean that educational difficulties are typically assessed without proper reference to a child’s cultural and ethnic background and its effect on their education? The evidence comes from a variety of sources and, although conclusions differ somewhat, across different contexts there are broad parallels in findings internationally (Mitchell 2004). We will focus here on a recent national study in the UK that was mentioned in Chapter 1. Lindsay et al. (2006) report from a DfEScommissioned research study that socioeconomic disadvantage and gender have stronger associations than ethnicity with prevalence of SEN (indexed by receiving
54
Principles and concepts support at School Action Plus or through a statement of SEN). Boys were overrepresented relative to girls for most categories of SEN: by a ratio of 1.75 : 1 for MLD/SLD, by 2.5 : 1 for SpLD and SLCN, by 4 : 1 for BESD, and by 6 : 1 for ASD. There were no gender differences in sensory or physical needs or PMLD. An association was apparent between socioeconomic disadvantage and most categories of SEN. This was strongest in the case of BESD and MLD significant but lower in the case of SLD, PMLD, PD, MSI, SpLD and SLCN, and weak and non-significant in the case of ASD, HI and VI. After controlling for the effects of gender, socioeconomic disadvantage and year group, comparisons were made across all SEN categories between pupils from different minority ethnic groups and white British pupils.
•
Travellers of Irish heritage and Gypsy/Roma pupils were found to be 2.7 and 2.6 times more likely to have SEN;
•
black Caribbean pupils had a similar rate of identification to white British pupils.
•
black African, Indian, Bangladeshi and Chinese pupils were less likely to have identified SEN (Pakistani pupils were under-represented but not to a significant extent).
When relative percentages were examined across individual SEN categories a somewhat different picture emerged. Compared with white British pupils,
•
black Caribbean and mixed white and black Caribbean pupils were around 1½ times more likely to be identified as having BESD;
•
Bangladeshi pupils were nearly twice as likely to be identified as having a hearing impairment;
•
Pakistani pupils were 2–2½ times more likely to be identified as having PMLD, VI, HI or MSI;
•
other Asian and Chinese pupils were less likely to be identified as having MLD, SpLD or ASD;
•
travellers of Irish Heritage and Gypsy/Roma pupils were over-represented among many categories of SEN, including MLD, SLD and BESD.
From a review of the literature, Lindsay et al. (2006) also tentatively identify possible reasons for the disproportionalities identified in the national data. In the case of BESD they note that the literature suggests teacher and school factors, including racist attitudes and differential treatment of black pupils, as influential. However as all black pupils (e.g. black African) are not over-represented in this category, they suggest that further investigation of other influences will be important here. For over-representation involving Pakistani and Bangladeshi children the literature suggests a greater incidence of genetic factors related to consanguinity (where parents are blood relations) as an important factor. However, readers are cautioned not to over-attribute developmental difficulties to this factor for these children. It is suggested that the identified under-representation of Asian and Chinese children may reflect difficulties in differentiating learning difficulties from issues associated with learning EAL – separating SEN from AEN. The research base on Traveller groups is more limited. However, their over-
Concepts
55
representation has been tentatively linked both with factors associated with school (such as negative teacher attitudes, racism and bullying in the peer group, and a curriculum perceived as lacking relevance) and with factors associated with Traveller cultures (such as high mobility, poor attendance and a tradition of early drop-out from school).
The legal context The National Curriculum requirements The distinction that has been drawn in this chapter between SEN and AEN is reflected in statutory guidance which also highlights the importance of taking action to address the needs of groups and individuals. The National Curriculum handbooks for primary and secondary teachers (DfEE/QCA 2000; DfES/QCA 2005) set out the legal requirements of the National Curriculum in English schools and offer guidance on its implementation. The statutory inclusion statements contained in these handbooks set out guidance for schools to assist them in meeting their statutory responsibility to provide a broad and balanced curriculum for all pupils. Schools are advised of a range of specific actions that should be taken in all teaching to respond to diverse pupil needs which may relate to gender, disability, social and cultural background, ethnic background (including Travellers, refugees and asylum seekers), linguistic background and SEN. More detailed consideration is given to pupils who have SEN and to two groups of pupils with additional needs – those who have a disability and those who are learning EAL. As was highlighted in Figure 3.3, the Education Act 1996 specifically states that learning EAL must not, of itself, be regarded as a special educational need. The National Curriculum Statutory Inclusion Statement makes a similar point with regard to disability: Not all pupils with disabilities will necessarily have special educational needs. Many pupils with disabilities learn alongside their peers with little need for additional resources beyond the aids which they use as part of their daily life, such as a wheelchair, a hearing aid or equipment to aid vision. Teachers must take action, however, in their planning to ensure that these pupils are enabled to participate as fully and effectively as possible within the National Curriculum and the statutory assessment arrangements. Potential areas of difficulty should be identified and addressed at the outset of work, without recourse to the formal provisions for disapplication. (http://www.nc.uk.net/inclusion.html) The guidance offered on ways in which schools should respond to pupils’ SEN observes that in many cases school-based intervention involving greater differentiation of tasks and materials will be effective in facilitating access to learning. A range of examples are provided to illustrate how help can be provided:
•
with communication, language and literacy (e.g. through using visual and written materials in different formats, including Braille, using ICT, translators and alternative and augmentative communication, including signs and symbols);
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Principles and concepts
•
in developing understanding through use of all available senses and experiences (e.g. through using play, drama and visits, and diverse materials and resources, including ICT, to encourage exploration of the environment, increase pupils’ knowledge of the wider world or make up for a lack of firsthand experiences);
•
in planning for pupils’ full participation in learning and in physical and practical activities (e.g. through using specialist aids and equipment, adapting tasks or environments and providing support from adults or peers when needed);
•
in helping pupils to manage their behaviour, take part in learning effectively and safely, and, at Key Stage 4, prepare for work (e.g. through setting explicit realistic demands, using positive behaviour management and teaching skills for independent and collaborative working);
•
in helping individuals manage their emotions and take part in learning (e.g. through setting achievable goals, providing positive feedback, building selfesteem minimizing stress and creating a supportive learning environment).
Further subject-specific guidance is provided by the National Strategies waves of provision for children experiencing different degrees of difficulty in learning. See Chapter 13 for information on these aspects of the National Literacy Strategy. In some cases the school may itself need support in order to take further action: A smaller number of pupils may need access to specialist equipment and approaches or to alternative or adapted activities, consistent with schoolbased intervention augmented by advice and support from external specialists as described in the SEN Code of Practice, or, in exceptional circumstances, with a statement of special educational need. Teachers should, where appropriate, work closely with representatives of other agencies who may be supporting the pupil. (http://www.nc.uk.net/inclusion.html) The SEN Code of Practice The SEN Code of Practice (DfES 2001a) provides guidance to LEAs, school governing bodies, early years’ providers and health and social services on their duties under Part IV of the Education Act 1996. The Code also makes reference to provisions in the SEN and Disability Act 2001 and various statutory instruments, including the Education (Special Educational Needs) (Consolidation) Regulations 2001. The SEN Code of Practice identifies a number of fundamental principles (DfES 2001a: 7):
• •
a child with special educational needs should have their needs met
• •
the views of the child should be sought and taken into account
the special educational needs of children will normally be met in mainstream schools or settings parents have a vital role to play in supporting their child’s education
Concepts
•
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children with special educational needs should be offered full access to a broad, balanced and relevant education, including an appropriate curriculum for the foundation stage and the National Curriculum.
In accordance with the third and fourth of these principles, specific sections of the Code offer guidance on working in partnership with parents and on pupil participation in assessment and decision making. Guidance on identification, assessment and provision is offered to early education settings and to primary and secondary schools. In accordance with the second of the principles outlined above, it is emphasized that ‘all teachers are teachers of children with special educational needs’ (DfES 2001a: 44, 59) and that SEN is a ‘whole school’ issue. The guidance in particular highlights the following aspects. First, the importance of early identification and the role of class and subject teachers in monitoring performance in relation to level descriptions in the National Curriculum at the end of a Key Stage and National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy framework objectives. Second, the importance for children learning EAL of considering the child within their home, cultural and community context and utilizing any available community liaison arrangements. Slow progress needs to be carefully examined and it should not be assumed that it can be attributed to the pupils’ status as learners of EAL. Early assessment should be made of pupils’ past exposure to each of the languages they speak, their current use of them and their proficiency in them. This will provide a basis for identifying and evaluating both pupils’ language needs and any SEN they may have. Third, a graduated response is required to the continuum of SEN. Three levels are identified: School Action, School Action Plus and support provided by a statement of SEN. It is emphasized that pupils are not expected to progress through these levels. Indeed, where interventions work successfully the expectation is that pupils will subsequently require less help rather than more help. Where teachers or others present concerns supported by evidence about pupils’ progress, despite their receipt of differentiated learning opportunities, the SENCO should initiate further assessment to identify what school action is needed to help pupils progress. The SENCO is the member of staff within a school ‘who has responsibility for coordinating SEN provision within that school’ (DfES 2001a: 206). School action may involve the deployment of extra staff to provide one-to-one or small-group tuition or classroom support; the provision of different learning materials or special equipment; additional staff development and training on more effective strategies; or early advice on strategies or equipment from local authority support services. Parents have to be consulted and informed both about the action taken to help their child and its outcome. The provision made for an individual pupil which is in addition to or different from the differentiated curriculum plan for all pupils should be recorded in an individual education plan (IEP). The IEP should include information about:
• • • •
the short-term targets set for or by the child the teaching strategies to be used the provision to be put in place when the plan is to be reviewed
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Principles and concepts
• •
success and/or exit criteria outcomes (to be recorded when IEP is reviewed). (DfES 2001a: 54)
The guidance also states that IEPs should be crisply written and focus on three or four targets, clearly related to the individual’s needs, in key areas such as communication, literacy, mathematics, and behaviour and social skills. It should be noted the IEPs have not been universally welcomed, with some SENCOs describing them as a bureaucratic encumbrance. Tennant (2007) summarizes the continuing debate about the benefits and costs of IEPs, particularly in secondary schools. More recently the DfES has clarified that IEPs per se are not a statutory requirement and are only one way of recording provision that is ‘additional or different’. (DfES 2005f). It is pointed out that where schools have arrangements to plan individually for all pupils and record progress, IEPs may become unnecessary. Provision mapping is one strategy that has recently emerged in this context. Provision maps are defined as ‘a way of showing “at a glance” the range of provision a school makes for children with additional needs through additional staffing or peer support’ (DfES, 2005f: 194). Typically grids are constructed by first showing the additional and different provision being made. Then information may be added showing which children with which targets are accessing what provision and when. Unlike IEPs, a provision map does not have to be rewritten for every child. A provision map for a year group or subject can be highlighted or annotated to show the provision being made for an individual child. Provision maps have been commended as an effective way of demonstrating to a concerned parent/carer exactly what is being provided for their child. They have also been used in demonstrating the range of provision in place for a child to the SEN and Disability Tribunal. Such developments may go some way towards addressing some of the criticism that the Code of Practice has received, for example that the stages in effect extend the Warnock model of highly individualized assessment and support inappropriately to children in mainstream schools with a much lower level of need (Dyson and Millward 2002). However, others see the main difficulties as residing in later stages of the process. the procedural apparatus of identification and assessment which the body of the code is concerned to set out . . . is constructed upon a largely individualised model of learning difficulties, in which questions of school organisation disappear from the picture once the graduated assessment process has been set in motion. The focus thereafter is upon monitoring and reviewing the performance of the individual pupil within a system of provision whose prevailing norms are taken for granted. (Skidmore, 2004: 17) Where pupils continue to experience difficulties despite an individualized programme and focused support under School Action, external support services may be consulted for more detailed advice through School Action Plus. This may involve external support services offering advice about new IEPs and targets, providing more specialist assessments, advising on specialist strategies or materials, or providing direct support of various kinds. Although the expectation
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is that the delivery of the interventions recorded in the IEP, or equivalent, will continue to be primarily the responsibility of the class or subject teacher and that the strategies should be implemented as far as possible in the classroom setting, external specialists may be involved in teaching pupils directly for part of the time or in partnership with their teachers. Where a group-based approach to planning and recording is in place in the school, recording in relation to any individualized provision is likely to require a supplementary element. If a number of alternative intervention programmes have each been implemented for a reasonable period of time without success, the headteacher may consider referring a pupil for statutory assessment, detailing information on their National Curriculum levels and attainments in literacy and numeracy, the evidence collected through School Action and School Action Plus, information from the involvement of other professionals, and the views of the pupil and their parents. The pupil should continue to be supported through School Action Plus while the local authority is considering a request for a statutory assessment of their SEN. Guidance is offered to LEAs on the statutory assessment of SEN. ‘An assessment under section 323 of the Education Act 1996 should only be undertaken if the LEA believe that the child probably has special educational needs and that the LEA needs or probably needs to determine the child’s special educational provision itself by making a statement’ (DfES 2001a: 74). A request for a statutory assessment may be made by a pupil’s school, by their parent or by another agency such as an independent school, early education provider, health authority or social services department. Before deciding whether to make an assessment the LEA must notify and inform parents. If the request has not come from the pupil’s school the headteacher must be informed and asked for written evidence about the school’s assessment of the pupil’s needs and the provision that has been made for them. In deciding whether to make a statutory assessment, LEAs are to pay particular attention to:
•
evidence that the school has responded appropriately to the requirements of the National Curriculum, especially the section entitled ‘Inclusion: Providing effective learning opportunities for all children’
•
evidence provided by the child’s school, parents and other professionals where they have been involved with the child, as to the nature, extent and cause of the child’s learning difficulties
•
evidence of action already taken by the child’s school to meet and overcome those difficulties;
• •
evidence of the rate and style of the child’s progress evidence that where some progress has been made, it has only been as a result of much additional effort and instruction at a sustained level not usually commensurate with usual provision through Action Plus. (DfES, 2001a: 81)
Guidance is offered on the type of provision that may be required to meet pupils’ SEN in communication and interaction, in cognition and learning, behaviour, emotional and social development and arising from physical and/or sensory needs. Where the LEA judges that the child’s needs can be met from the
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Principles and concepts resources already available to mainstream schools in their area, the decision will be taken not to make a statutory assessment. The LEA must explain the reasons for their decision to the pupil’s parents and their school. Parents may appeal against the decision to the SEN Tribunal. If the LEA decides to make a statutory assessment they must seek parental, educational, medical, psychological and social services’ advice on the pupil’s special educational needs plus any other advice considered desirable by the LEA or other relevant bodies. This may include the views of the child. The LEA will consider all this advice in deciding whether they need to make a statement. The LEA has 10 weeks from notifying parents that they intend to make an assessment to writing to parents letting them know the outcome of the assessment. If, as a result of the assessment, the LEA decide that they do not need to make a statement, they must present parents with a note in lieu, which gives the reasons for their decision, outlines the child’s needs and offers guidance on the appropriate educational provision that might be made by the school, possibly with specialist advice, but without being determined by the LEA. Parents may appeal against the decision not to issue a statement to the SEN Tribunal. The operation of the SEN Tribunal is governed by sections 333–6 of the Education Act 1996 and the associated regulations. Appeals to the tribunal are heard by a panel of three people, two of whom should have relevant expertise in SEN and/ or local government and one of whom, the chair, will be legally trained. The SEN Tribunal’s ‘overriding aim is to consider the needs of the child’ (DfEE, 1997: 29). If the LEA decide they need to issue a statement they will send a proposed statement to the parents. The statement must be set out in the format shown in Figure 3.5 and all sections completed except Part 4, where parents will be invited to express their preferences about the school to be named. The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act places a duty on LEAs and schools to ensure that pupils with SEN are educated in a mainstream setting unless this is incompatible with the wishes of their parents or the efficient education of the other pupils. If LEAs do not name the parents’ first choice of school in the final version of the statement they must explain their decision to the parents who have a right to appeal to the SEN Tribunal. An annual review of each statement must be carried out, involving the parents, the pupil, the LEA, the school and all the professionals involved. The purpose of the review is to collect everyone’s perspectives on the child’s progress, to ensure that desired outcomes are being achieved and, if necessary, to amend the statement to reflect any new needs identified and provision required. The LEA may decide that the objectives of the statement have been achieved and that they should no longer maintain the statement. Where the pupil or their family has EAL the Code highlights the need to:
• •
translate any relevant documents into the family’s mother tongue
•
ensure that any professionals from the child’s community have similar interpretation and translation facilities in order that they may contribute as fully as possible to the review process
ensure that interpreters are available to the child and family both in the preparatory stages to the review meeting and in the review meeting itself
Concepts
The Statement of Special Educational Needs Part 1. Introduction: The child’s name and address and date of birth. The child’s home language and religion. The names and address(es) of the child’s parents. Part 2. Special Educational Needs (learning difficulties): Details of each and every one of the child’s special educational needs as identified by the LA during statutory assessment and on the advice received and attached as appendices to the statement. Part 3. Special Educational Provision: The special educational provision that the LA consider necessary to meet the child’s special educational needs. (a) The objectives that the special educational provision should aim to meet. (b) The special educational provision which the LA consider appropriate to meet the needs set out in Part 2 and to meet the objectives. (c) The arrangements to be made for monitoring progress in meeting those objectives, particularly for setting short-term targets for the child’s progress and for reviewing his or her progress on a regular basis. Part 4. Placement: The type and name of school where the special educational provision set out in Part 3 is to be made or the arrangements for the education to be made otherwise than in school. Part 5. Non-Educational Needs: All relevant non-educational needs of the child as agreed between the health services, social services or other agencies and the LA. Part 6. Non-Educational Provision: Details of relevant non-educational provision required to meet the non-educational needs of the child as agreed between the health services and/or social services and the LA, including the agreed arrangements for its provision. Signature and date APPENDICES All the advice obtained and taken into consideration during the assessment process must be attached as appendices to the statement. The advice appended to the statement must include: A
Parental evidence
B
Educational advice
C
Medical advice
D
Psychological advice
E
Social Services advice
F
Any other advice, such as the views of the child, which the LA or any other body from whom advice is sought considers desirable. In particular where the child’s parent is a serving member of the armed forces, advice from Service Children’s Education (SCE)
Figure 3.5
Format and content of the Statement of SEN
Source: DfES (2001a: 100–101).
61
62
Principles and concepts
•
ensure that, if possible, a bilingual support teacher or teacher of English as an additional language is available to the child and family. (DfES 2001a: 125)
Any annual review held in Year 9 and subsequent years must draw up and review a transition plan in addition to reviewing the young person’s statement. The aim of the transition plan is to prepare systematically for the young person’s transition to adult life and ensure that they receive any specialist help they need during continuing education or vocational or occupational training. Any relevant agencies that may play a significant role in the young person’s life during the postschool years should be invited and the ‘Connexions’ service must be involved. Other relevant legislation and guidance Disability discrimination The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 introduced new measures aimed at ending the discrimination experienced by many disabled people. Circular 20/99 (DfEE 1999c), entitled What the Disability Discrimination Act Means for Schools and LEAs, informed schools and LEAs about their new duties in three main areas: employing staff, providing non-educational services to the public (e.g. hiring school rooms), and publishing information about arrangements for disabled pupils. In this last area, governing bodies’ annual reports to parents must explain their admission arrangements for disabled pupils, how the access of these pupils will be enabled and what will be done to make sure that they are treated fairly. The guidance points out that failure by the school to comply with their published policy in any individual case could be a central issue in a parental appeal under local admissions appeal arrangements or in an appeal to the SEN Tribunal. The SEN and Disability Act 2001 extended the Disability Discrimination Act to cover the provision of education. The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 amended the 1995 Act and placed a duty on all public bodies, including schools, to promote equality of opportunity for people with disabilities. A person is now defined as disabled if he/she has a mental or physical impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out day-to-day activities. Included in the broadened definition are difficulties resulting from dyslexia, autistic spectrum disorder, diabetes and severe asthma, for example. Not all children who are defined as disabled will have SEN. For example, those with severe asthma or diabetes may not have SEN but may have rights under the Disability Discrimination Act. Similarly, not all children with SEN will be defined as having a disability under the Act. The multi-media resource pack ‘Implementing the Disability Discrimination Act in Schools and Early Years Settings’ (DfES 2006l) provides a guide to school’s duties under the Act and how these fit with SEN duties. Activity 3.6
Definition of disability
1
Read the following extract from Teachernet (DfES 2005g) about a child to whom the name Tom has been given:
2
Then look again at the three pen pictures of children provided in Activity 3.2:
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(a) Which of these children may have a disability? (b) What questions would you need to ask in order to reach a decision in each case?
Is Tom disabled? Answering the four questions below will help you decide if Tom is disabled. 1 Does Tom have difficulty with any of the following ‘normal dayto-day activities’?
• • • • • • • • • •
Mobility: getting to/from school, moving about the school and/ or going on school visits? Manual dexterity: holding a pen, pencil or book, using tools in design and technology, playing a musical instrument, throwing and catching a ball? Physical co-ordination: washing or dressing, taking part in games and Physical Education? Ability to lift, carry or otherwise move every day objects: carrying a full school bag or other fairly heavy items? Continence: going to the toilet or controlling the need to go to the toilet? Speech: communicating with others or understanding what others are saying; how they express themselves orally or in writing? Hearing: hearing what people say in person or on a video, DVD, radio or tape recording? Eyesight: ability to see clearly (with spectacles/contact lenses where necessary), including visual presentations in the classroom? Memory or ability to concentrate, learn or understand: work in school including reading, writing, number work or understanding information? Perception of the risk of physical danger: inability to recognise danger e.g. when jumping from a height, touching hot objects or crossing roads?
2 Is Tom’s difficulty caused by an underlying impairment or condition? 3 Has Tom’s impairment or condition lasted, or is likely to last, more than 12 months? 4 Is the effect of Tom’s impairment or condition ‘more than minor or trivial’?
Answer: If you have answered yes to questions 1 to 4, then Tom is probably disabled under the Disability Discrimination Act. If Tom receives medical or other treatment to reduce or remove the effects of his condition, he may still be disabled. The test is whether the effects would recur if he were to stop his treatment.
64
Principles and concepts Looked after children The Children Act 1989 brought together previously fragmented legislation about caring for, bringing up and protecting children. The welfare of the child was enshrined as the paramount consideration in all decision making. As noted in Chapter 2, children’s ascertainable wishes and feelings are accorded importance in that courts must have regard to them. However, the Act also emphasizes the importance of the family – the duty of local authorities being to provide support to children in need and their families. Children are defined as being in need if:
•
they are unlikely to achieve or maintain, or to have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining, a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision of services by a local authority;
•
their health or development is likely to be significantly impaired, or further impaired, without the provision of such services; or
•
they are disabled.
In line with the distinction made throughout this chapter, the SEN Code of Practice acknowledges that ‘a child with special educational needs will not necessarily be “in need” as defined in the Children Act 1989’ (DfES 2001a: 141). The concept of parental responsibility was another central element of the Children Act 1989. This applies even when children are unable to live at home, but must be looked after by the local authority. The local authority has a duty to ensure contact with the parents whenever possible for a child looked after by them and a duty to return the child to their family unless this is against their interests. While the interests of the child would require action by a local authority in cases of abuse or neglect in the family, the dangers are highlighted of unwarranted intervention in families which does not positively contribute to the child’s welfare. The Act sets out a range of welfare duties for local authorities in looking after children and requires that account must be taken of the child’s racial origin and cultural and linguistic background. There are particular implications for education where a pupil is accommodated by a local authority, is subject to a care order or to an education supervision order (which can be made when a child of compulsory school age is not receiving efficient full-time education – for example, through persistent poor attendance). The Arrangements for Placement of Children Regulations made under the Act require that the childcare plan drawn up in these cases must include information about arrangements for the child’s education (the personal education plan). The personal education plan should include information as appropriate from a statement of SEN, annual review or IEP. The Department for Education and Employment/Department of Health (2000) Guidance on the Education of Children in Public Care suggests that LEAs and social services departments should consider the advantages of linking their reviews of a pupil’s SEN statement and childcare plan in order to ensure an integrated approach to their needs. Every Child Matters Ensuring an integrated approach to the needs of children has emerged as one of the major planks of current government policy, together with an accountability focus on ensuring that key outcomes for children are achieved. In response to the
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Laming inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié, the Green Paper Every Child Matters (ECM: DfES 2003b) proposed a range of measures to reform the provision of services for children. These focus on protecting children at risk within a framework of universal services which both act preventively and support every child in developing their potential and achieving desired outcomes. Following consultation with children, young people and families the outcomes sought were summarized as follows:
•
being healthy: enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy lifestyle;
• •
staying safe: being protected from harm and neglect;
•
making a positive contribution: being involved with the community and society and not engaging in anti-social or offending behaviour;
•
achieving economic well-being: not being prevented by economic disadvantage from achieving their full potential in life.
enjoying and achieving: getting the most out of life and developing the skills needed for adulthood;
These are now commonly referred to as the ‘ECM five outcomes’. In pursuit of these outcomes, ECM identified a number of ways in which existing initiatives would be developed:
•
creating Sure Start Children’s Centres in the 20 per cent most deprived neighbourhoods;
•
promoting full service extended schools open beyond school hours to provide breakfast/after-school clubs and childcare, and have health and social care support services on site;
• • • • •
developing out-of-school activities for children; increasing investment in child and adolescent mental health services; improving speech and language therapy; tackling homelessness; reforms to the youth justice system.
In addition, new proposals for action were presented in four main areas:
• • • •
supporting parents and carers; early intervention and effective protection; accountability and integration – locally, regionally and nationally; workforce reform.
It is intended that a coordinated continuum of services will be available to parents and carers (see Figure 3.6). Early intervention and effective protection will be facilitated by improving information sharing between agencies. By 2008 local authorities are expected to introduce a Common Assessment Framework across education, health and social care to assess the additional needs of children and
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Principles and concepts
Figure 3.6
Continuum of Needs and Services
Source: DfES (2005g).
young people whose needs are not being met by universal services. Where more than one service is involved a lead professional can be identified to ensure effective coordination. The development of service delivery by multi-disciplinary teams based around schools and children’s centres was also advocated as was the integration of key services for children and young people under the Director of Children’s Services as part of Children’s Trusts which bring together local authority education and children’s social services, some children’s health services and other services such as Connexions and Youth Offending Teams. The legislative basis for these reforms was provided by the Children Act 2004 which established for England:
•
a children’s commissioner to champion the views and interests of children and young people;
•
a duty on local authorities to make arrangements to promote cooperation between agencies and other bodies, such as voluntary and community organizations, (‘key partners’) in order to improve children’s well-being (defined by reference to the five outcomes), and a duty on key partners to cooperate with the arrangements;
• •
a duty on key agencies to safeguard and promote the welfare of children;
•
provision for common databases to enable better sharing of information about children and young people;
•
a requirement for a single children and young people’s plan to be drawn up by each local authority (replacing separate education and social care plans);
•
a requirement on local authorities to appoint a director of children’s services and designate a lead member of the council to take overall responsibility;
a duty on local authorities to set up local safeguarding children boards and on key partners to take part;
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•
the creation of an integrated inspection framework and the conduct of joint area reviews to assess progress at local level in improving outcomes;
•
provisions relating to foster care, private fostering and the education of children in care.
In its strategy for SEN (DfES 2004c), the government explicitly linked the ECM focus on early intervention, preventive work and integrated services for children to meeting the needs of children with SEN and their families. Action programmes are identified in four areas:
•
Early intervention – to ensure that children who have difficulties learning receive the help they need as soon as possible and that parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities have access to suitable childcare
•
Removing barriers to learning – by embedding inclusive practice in every school and early years setting
•
Raising expectations and achievement – by developing teachers’ skills and strategies for meeting the needs of children with SEN and sharpening our focus on the progress children make
•
Delivering improvements in partnership – taking a hands-on approach to improvement so that parents can be confident that their child will get the education they need. (DfES 2004c: introduction)
The Education Act 2005 made a number of changes to the framework for school inspections, including new requirements to report on the contribution made by the school to the well-being of their pupils and on the extent to which the education provided meets the needs of the range of pupils in the school, in particular vulnerable pupils, including those with SEN.
Conclusions In this chapter we have drawn a distinction between the SEN of individual children and the additional needs that may be experienced by particular groups of children whose circumstances or background differ from the majority of the school population. Changes over time in the conceptualization of SEN were tracked and approaches that focus on individual differences and on environmental demands were compared. The advantages of an interactional analysis that brings both of these approaches together were described, and approaches were identified that can be taken by schools to empower groups of students who have additional educational needs. While maintaining the distinction between the terms ‘SEN’ and ‘AEN’, relationships that have been found to exist between them were described and possible reasons for these relationships explored. Finally, current legislation and guidance on identifying children’s educational and other needs and on making appropriate provision for them were summarized.
4 Inclusion
Objectives When you have studied this chapter you should be able to:
• • •
outline the development of inclusive education and identify common elements in the concept as described by different authors; discuss the main findings of the research which has been conducted in inclusive education; describe ways in which inclusion can be promoted and supported.
Contents What is inclusion?
• •
Segregation, integration and inclusion The difference between integration and inclusion
Special educational provision
• • •
A historical perspective The continuum of provision and the reform of mainstream education Inclusion: rights and research
Integration and inclusion: research evidence
• • • •
Comparative studies The efficient education of mainstream pupils Factors in successful inclusion Inclusion and individual needs?
Promoting inclusion in a multiethnic society
• • • •
Promoting a whole-school inclusive ethos Promoting an inclusive ethos in the classroom Evidence-based support strategies in the classroom In-class support: extra adults in the classroom
Conclusions
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What is inclusion? Segregation, integration and inclusion ‘Inclusion’ is often defined as a journey or movement away from the kind of segregation described by Bennett et al. (1998: 155): I arrived at the school at 8.45am. It seemed like a typical suburban primary school. The grounds and school building were well-kept. There was the usual scene of children playing in the yard and arriving at school. The principal had asked me to come to the school before the first class period so that he could introduce me to John’s teacher and show me his classroom. He escorted me to a prefabricated building, physically separate from the rest of the school. It was the special class for ten children with mild mental handicap. Historically, if children had particular difficulties in school they were put together with other children whose needs were perceived to be similar. It was argued that this allowed special facilities and specially trained staff to be made available to children who need them. This solution was also applied to children learning EAL. Putting together groups of children who are thought to have similar needs results in them being segregated from other pupils of their age. This can be stigmatizing. For example, pupils in a special unit in a mainstream secondary school that was studied by Sinclair Taylor (1995: 267) were in no doubt about their image in the school: ‘They [mainstream] call us unit kids and provoke us and say we are spastics’ (unit pupil, aged 16); ‘Main school kids tease you, they see the unit as a place for mental people – less better than themselves’ (unit pupil, aged 12). It can also restrict access to important educational opportunities, as was highlighted when the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) condemned the segregated arrangements made by Calderdale Borough Council for children who failed an English language screening test for admission to local schools (CRE 1986). The formal investigation found that there was ‘indirectly discriminatory practice contrary to the Race Relations Act 1976’ (CRE 1986: 5). The investigators noted that ‘the range of subjects . . . was narrower than that covered by the mainstream classes . . . [they] had no practical classes, no music, no foreign languages and no specific periods for religious education’ (CRE 1986: 12). Such concerns have been important in fuelling a movement away from segregated provision of various types. The metaphor of a journey is explicitly explored by Clark et al. (1999) in their analysis of the attempts of four comprehensive schools to develop in a more inclusive way. Other authors similarly focus on inclusion as a process of change. Reynolds (1989) suggests that inclusion is best regarded as a progressive trend for taking increasing responsibility for educating groups previously excluded from mainstream society. He sees social values about race, ethnicity, language or disability as key influences on exclusion. From this perspective the current debates that will be reviewed in this chapter are set within a historical context where moves in the 1950s to racially integrate schools in the USA had an important influence (Liu 1995). This is also made explicit by Booth et al. (2000: 14) writing in a British context:
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Principles and concepts Racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, disablism, and bullying all share a common root in an intolerance to difference and the abuse of power to create and perpetuate inequalities. Making schools more inclusive may involve staff in a painful process of challenging their own discriminatory practices and attitudes. The Ofsted (2000: 4) guidance for inspectors and schools on evaluating educational inclusion pays ‘particular attention to the provision made for and the achievement of different groups of pupils within a school’, where the term ‘different groups’ could apply to:
• • •
girls and boys;
• • • •
pupils with special educational needs;
•
any pupils who are at risk of disaffection and exclusion.
minority ethnic and faith groups, Travellers, asylum seekers and refugees; pupils who need support to learn English as an additional language (EAL); gifted and talented pupils; children ‘looked after’ by the local authority; other children, such as sick children; young carers; those children from families under stress; pregnant school girls and teenage mothers; and
In accordance with the purpose of the book, this chapter will focus on inclusion in provision for pupils with SEN in the context of this broader emphasis in inclusive practice. Inclusion has been seen by many as instrumental in countering prejudice and bias in school and later in society. This is embodied in the Salamanca World Statement issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO 1994: 11) on principles, policy and practice in SEN: ‘Inclusion and participation are essential to human dignity and to the enjoyment and exercise of human rights. Within the field of education this is reflected in the development of strategies that seek to bring about a genuine equalisation of opportunity’. The statement was signed by the representatives of 92 governments, including the British government, and 25 international organizations. It calls on governments ‘to adopt the principle of inclusive education, enrolling all children in regular schools unless there are compelling reasons for doing otherwise’ (UNESCO 1994: 44). The Department for Education in London expressed support for the principle of inclusion (DfEE 1997). However, at the same time it made clear that the needs of individual children are considered to be paramount. Where individual needs could not be met in mainstream schools, the government made a commitment to maintaining specialist provision as an integral part of overall provision. Alongside this, the aim, wherever possible, was to return children to the mainstream and to increase the skills and resources in mainstream schools. This shift in emphasis from an exclusive focus on the needs of individual pupils to an approach which focuses centrally on the skills and resources available in mainstream schools is an important difference between the earlier concept of ‘integration’ and the more recent concept of ‘inclusion’.
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The difference between integration and inclusion Ainscow (1995) suggested that integration is about making a limited number of additional arrangements for individual pupils with SEN in schools which themselves change little overall. On the other hand, inclusion implies the introduction of a more radical set of changes through which schools restructure themselves so as to be able to embrace all children. Integration involves the school in a process of assimilation where the onus is on the assimilating individual (whether a pupil with SEN or a pupil with a different cultural and linguistic background) to make changes so that they can ‘fit in’. By contrast inclusion involves the school in a process of accommodation where the onus is on the school to change, adapting curricula, methods, materials and procedures so that it becomes more responsive. Given an inclusive philosophy, pupils with SEN may be a stimulus to development of a richer mainstream learning experience for all. Despite this conceptual distinction between integration and inclusion, Thomas et al. (1998) point out that the terms are often used as synonyms. Where one term is used rather than the other, this may have more to do with the date of publication of the book or article in question than with the educational provision that is being described. In their study of full inclusion models in five US states, Baker and Zigmond (1995) found that while the term ‘inclusion’ had different meanings for different people, what was common was the view of inclusion as a ‘place’ – a seat in an age appropriate mainstream classroom, where a child could have access to and participate fully in the curriculum. It also meant bringing the special needs teacher or assistant into that place to help make it work. In a national study conducted in 1995, the US National Centre on Educational Restructuring and Inclusion defined inclusion as: the provision of services to students with disabilities, including those with severe impairments, in the neighbourhood school in age-appropriate general education classes, with the necessary support services and supplementary aids (for the child and the teacher) both to ensure the child’s success – academic, behavioural and social – and to prepare the child to participate as a full and contributing member of the society. (Lipsky and Gartner 1996: 763) Sebba and Sachdev (1997: 9), writing in a British context, likewise offer a working definition which is prescriptive in suggesting what is needed rather than being descriptive of current practice: Inclusive education describes the process by which a school attempts to respond to all pupils as individuals by reconsidering and restructuring its curricular organisation and provision and allocating resources to enhance equality of opportunity. Through this process the school builds its capacity to accept all pupils from the local community who wish to attend and, in so doing, reduces the need to exclude pupils. The Index for Inclusion, which was distributed to all British schools, also emphasizes a process view of inclusion: In our view, inclusion is a set of never ending processes. It involves the specification of the direction of change. It is relevant to any school however
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Principles and concepts
Figure 4.1
The Primary National Strategy model of three circles of inclusion
Source: DfES (2006a: 3).
inclusive or exclusive its current cultures, policies and practices. It requires schools to engage in a critical examination of what can be done to increase the learning and participation of the diversity of students within the school and its locality. (Booth et al. 2000: 12) Within the Index for Inclusion the term ‘barriers to learning and participation’ is used instead of ‘SEN’. This is intended to focus attention upon an interactional model of learning difficulties, and upon the role of the school in identifying barriers and minimizing them through provision of appropriate support. As we have seen in Chapter 3, this conceptualization is explicit in the UK government’s current strategy for SEN. It is also embedded within the National Curriculum statutory inclusion statement which sets out key principles for developing a more inclusive curriculum: setting suitable learning challenges, responding to pupils’ diverse learning needs, and overcoming potential barriers to learning and assessment for individuals and groups of pupils. These principles are incorporated in the Primary National Strategy model of three circles of inclusion, as can be seen in Figure 4.1.
Special educational provision A historical perspective In the late eighteenth century the first special schools in Britain were set up. At that time only the children of the upper and middle classes received education. The
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special schools were intended to provide for children with severe hearing or visual difficulties who could not learn using the methods and materials available in ordinary schools. As more and more children were brought within the education system in the late nineteenth century, the schools of the day were faced with a wide range of learning and behaviour to which they were not accustomed and which they could not easily accommodate. Increasing numbers of children were excluded. Indeed, there was no incentive to try to include them, rather the reverse. Each year examinations in the ‘three Rs’ (reading, writing and arithmetic) were conducted by Her Majesty’s Inspectors and the performance of each child was combined to determine the bulk of government grant to the school for the following year. Payment by results meant that part of each teacher’s salary depended on the rate of exam passes in their classes (Sutherland 1981). The rejection by mainstream schools of slow learning and emotionally disturbed children who were entitled to education under the 1870 Education Act led to the expansion of the special school sector (DES 1978). It has been argued that the introduction of national testing in the last decade of the twentieth century and the publication of league tables of school results has meant that similar factors to those operating a century earlier are again influencing the inclusiveness of educational provision. However, some researchers have found that while the ‘standards agenda’ may have an undermining effect on inclusion in some respects, it has also required schools to examine closely the progress of groups of pupils who might otherwise be overlooked and to re-examine the practices that appear to be failing these pupils (Ainscow et al. 2006a). Activity 4.1
Influences on exclusion and inclusion: past and present
Thomas et al. (1998) argued that the market-orientated education polices introduced by government (e.g. the publication of league tables of test results) have made many schools wary of accepting children whose low attainment or disruptive effect on others’ learning may depress examination or SAT scores. They also suggest that the significant increase in exclusions recorded in the 1990s (Ofsted 1996a) was strongly influenced by these new pressures on schools. (a) To what extent can you see parallels between the factors reported to be influencing inclusion and exclusion in British schools in the late nineteenth century and those which schools are currently experiencing? (b) Are there other important influences that affect inclusion today but do not seem to have been operating then?
The expansion of the special school sector in the early years of the twentieth century was entirely consistent with the concept of ‘handicap’ prevalent at the time. Handicap was understood in terms of defect, and physical and sensory impairments were thought to impose limitations on cognitive development. Handicapped children were seen as different in kind from other children, so it made sense to develop a different education system for them. Indeed, it was argued that separate provision should be made in the interests of the children concerned. This view is seen in Cyril Burt’s (1917: 38–9) ‘tentative suggestions’ for special classes for children with learning difficulties:
74
Principles and concepts The ideal arrangement, therefore, would be a series of classes parallel to the customary series, where promotion was slower or the increase of difficulty less. Since backwardness affects scholastic and abstract work more than practical or concrete, the curriculum should include a large proportion of concrete and manual work; and the teaching methods should be similarly adapted . . . The classes should be small in number, not only because these children need more individual attention in their work, but also because each class needs close observation and enquiry. Conditions should be systematically analysed; progress systematically tested; and accurate records kept of both in terms of objective facts rather than personal impressions . . . Too often when discovered the backward child is merely ignored, or else passed on to another school or class where he is accepted, and his condition has once more to be slowly rediscovered. The feeling that he is not wanted, not understood, not like other children, in short, subnormal and a nuisance, damages the child far more than the subnormality itself. This concept, of different kinds of education for different types of children, also underpinned the division of the mainstream population at 11 years of age into ‘academic’, ‘technical’ and ‘manual’ which was introduced in most parts of the UK following the Norwood Report (Board of Education 1943) and the Education Act 1944. Prior to the 1960s in many countries the ‘handicapped’ were considered to be quite distinct from the rest of the population. Ordinary schooling was just not considered to be an option for them. In Britain children with severe learning difficulties – then called ‘educationally subnormal (severe)’ – were not considered capable of benefiting from education (Hegarty 1993). They did not attend schools run by education authorities. Instead they were provided with health service ‘training centres’. Moves to reverse the separation of ‘handicapped’ children gathered momentum from the mid-1960s. There was a change in the conceptualization of disability as the result of a broader rights movement in society towards ‘normalization’. In this view people with disabilities should have access to the same opportunities and options as other members of society. At the same time, concerns were raised by researchers such as Dunn (1968) about the lack of evidence to suggest that disabled children who were educated in special schools did any better than those who were being educated in mainstream schools by default, due to lack of provision. It was argued that mainstreaming or integration of children with SEN into mainstream schools would facilitate their access to and participation in society, both as children and adults, and that continued segregation could no longer be justified from either a ‘research’ or a ‘rights’ perspective. In Britain the Education (Handicapped Children) Act 1970 removed the legal distinction between those who were and were not educable in school. When this legislation was enacted all children, including those with severe learning difficulties, were entitled to education for the first time. In the USA, similarly, Public Law 94–142 (Education of All Handicapped Act 1975) established the principle of ‘zero reject’ or entitlement for all in public education. Furthermore, it promoted integration by setting the requirement that children should be educated in the ‘least restrictive environment’. Mittler (1985) drew attention to the way in which the integration movement
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started as a rallying cry for those with a vision of change in education and within ten years had become the ‘new orthodoxy’. The Warnock Committee (DES 1978: 99) identified it as ‘the central contemporary issue in special education’. The OECD (1981: 5) considered it ‘the dominant policy relating to the organisation of schooling for handicapped children in most of the member countries’. A survey by UNESCO (1988) reported that in 75 per cent of the 58 countries responding, integration was a declared policy. The continuum of provision and the reform of mainstream education In the USA the ‘least restrictive environment’ referred to the educational setting that would best facilitate the educational development of a particular individual child. In order to ensure access for individuals to the least restrictive environment, it was often considered important to ensure that a continuum of services was available. In Britain also the commitment to a continuum of special educational provision has remained a consistent feature over the past 30 years. Figure 4.2 Sample Continuum of Services
(i)
Level 1: General education classroom Level 2: General education classroom with consultative services
(ii)
Level 3: General education classroom with supplementary instruction and services
(iii)
Level 4: General education classroom with resource room services Level 5: Full-time special education classroom Level 6: Special school Level 7: Special facilities, non-public school
(iv)
(v)
(vi)
(vii)
(viii) (ix) (x)
Figure 4.2
Full-time education in an ordinary class with any necessary help and support Education in an ordinary class with periods of withdrawal to a special class or unit or other supporting base Education in a special class or unit with periods of attendance at an ordinary class and full involvement in the general community life and extracurricular activities of the ordinary school Full-time education in a special class or unit with social contact with the main school Education in a special school, day or residential, with some shared lessons with a neighbouring ordinary school Full-time education in a day special school with social contact with an ordinary school Full-time education in residential special school with social contact with an ordinary school Short-term education in hospitals or other establishments Long-term education in hospitals or other establishments Home tuition
Special education: a continuum of provision?
Sources: left column, Mastropieri and Scruggs (1997); right column, DES (1978: para. 6.11).
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Principles and concepts shows how the continuum of special education provision has been conceptualized in the UK and the USA. Dyson (1991) criticized the conception of the mainstream curriculum which underpins the Warnock Committee’s thinking, arguing that it assumes that the curriculum will not change and that certain children will fail without additional resourcing (which in turn is defined as that needed in order to prevent failure). He acknowledged that this might be applicable to some children with sensory or physical difficulties, where they can be given clearly identifiable resources such as technological aids or large-print worksheets to enable them to succeed in a unreconstructed curriculum. However, for the large majority of children with SEN there is a need to look at the curriculum and the way in which it is delivered, and to make substantial revisions. More recently, Warnock (2005) has agreed with Dyson’s analysis and questioned the extent to which mainstream education can be reformed, particularly given the pressures associated with the Education Act 1988 involving raising achievement and league tables. Arguing that some children’s special needs will be best met in special schools, Warnock (2005: 22) described the concept of inclusion as ‘possibly the most disastrous legacy of the 1978 Report’, in particular as it appeared to put the continuing existence of special schools under threat. Warnock argued that the ultimate objective of an inclusive society may be best served by seeing inclusive schooling as involvement in a common enterprise of learning and endorsed the view of the National Association of Head Teachers that the most appropriate educational setting for a child will be ‘the one in which they can be most fully included in the life of their school community and which gives them a sense of both belonging and achievement’ (Warnock 2005: 41). The Green Paper, Excellence for All Children: Meeting Special Educational Needs (DfEE 1997), attended to the need for mainstream school reform, while remaining committed to the concept of a continuum of SEN provision: We want to develop an education system in which special provision is seen as an integral part of overall provision, aiming wherever possible to return children to the mainstream and to increase the skills and resources available in mainstream schools. We want therefore to strengthen links between special and mainstream schools, and to ensure that LEA support services are used to support mainstream placements. (DfEE 1997: 44) There has been a trend towards the greater use of mainstream placement, with numbers in special schools falling gradually from 1.5 per cent of children in 1983 to 1.1 per cent in 2004 (DfES 2004c). Considerable variation between LEAs was reported, with the percentage in special schools ranging from 0.1 per cent to 2.4 per cent. However, other trends have also been apparent, particularly for pupils with challenging behaviour of various kinds. Between 2001 and 2003 the proportion of pupils in pupil referral units rose by 25 per cent, and there was a 10 per cent increase in the number of pupils placed in independent special schools, reflecting difficulties experienced by mainstream schools, and some special schools, in meeting severe or complex needs (Ofsted 2004). In accordance with the focus in the Every Child Matters framework on integrated planning and partnership in the delivery of services to meet individual
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needs, the government’s strategy for meeting SEN (DfES 2004c) presented a vision of community partnerships between schools and support services in an area:
•
special schools providing for those pupils who have the most severe and complex needs and sharing their specialist skills and knowledge with mainstream schools to enable them to support pupils with less severe needs;
•
schools working together and with specialist advice from multi-disciplinary teams of local authority and health service staff to support the inclusion of children from their local community.
In the UK, current government targets encourage further development of inclusive provision, while stopping well short of a commitment to full inclusion. Tutt (2007) suggests that the debate needs to move on accordingly from a concept of inclusion that involves including all pupils in mainstream schools to one which focuses on including all schools and specialist provision in an inclusive education service. Examples of implementation from across the continuum of provision are provided, including examples of co-located and federated schools. Co-located mainstream and special schools may share the same buildings, but commonly are physically separate, although on the same site. While some longstanding examples can be identified, the Building Schools for the Future programme has provided a new impetus. Federations, which were enabled by regulations introduced with the Education Act 2002, involve bringing together in terms of leadership and operation schools that are usually physically separate. In ‘hard’ federations the schools involved will have a single governing body and an executive headteacher or chief executive across all schools. In ‘soft’ federations each school retains their own governing body, although there is a joint governing/ management group. Tutt (2007) gives the following examples of federations involving special schools:
•
The Dartington Village Federation consists of a primary, secondary and allage special school, all under the same roof and with a single governing body and chief executive.
•
The West Sussex Federation consists of a secondary school for boys and two special schools (one for pupils with moderate learning difficulties and the other for pupils with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties). The special schools are separated by a few miles but now have a joint governing body.
Inclusion: rights and research Proponents of inclusion have concentrated on the human rights of children with SEN when arguing their case and have emphasized the social benefits they expect the children to experience. However, the social status and acceptance of mainstreamed children with learning difficulties in different national school systems has generally been found by research studies to be low; see Gresham and MacMillan (1997b) on the USA, Roberts and Zubrick (1992) on Australia, and Nabuzoka and Smith (1993) on the UK. The relevance of such research findings to policy decisions has been challenged by rights advocates – for example, ‘Data can be used to evaluate progress towards the goals established by values, but data
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Principles and concepts cannot alter the value itself’ (McLeskey et al. 1990: 322). The view that inclusion represents an unquestionable moral imperative has been challenged by those who argue that the rights of the child to have maximum access to mainstream education need to be balanced by their right to an effective education, appropriate to their needs. Issues of safeguarding have also been raised. For example, Warnock (2005) specifically cites social rejection and bullying of children with SEN in mainstream schools in arguing for special school placement. Whereas questions about inclusion as social policy tend to have been debated in terms of values and rights issues, questions about the effectiveness of education tend to have been addressed by research and evaluation studies. There appears to be some agreement at least on the importance of research in monitoring the outcomes of inclusion. Thomas et al. (1998: 5–6) pointed out that even if principles cannot be evaluated for their veracity, nor ethics for their truth, ‘it is crucial that the principled policy decisions to provide inclusive education are rigorously monitored, especially as recent evidence concerning the academic, social and emotional benefits of integrative programmes [is] nowhere near as clear-cut as earlier evidence promised’. Martin (1995) described his worst fear about inclusion as being that the value of programmes would be judged primarily by teacher and administrator ‘feelings’, with, in some cases, parent feelings being taken into account. He argues for the importance of careful systematic measurement of child achievement, progress in areas of difficulty, self-concept and socialization, and criticizes the omission in many initiatives of any formal, comprehensive evaluation plan to measure outcomes. Concerns about outcomes may be challenged by those who argue that inclusive education is of value in itself. However, there are other values which are espoused concurrently with a commitment to maximizing inclusion which may sometimes be in conflict. Hegarty (1987: 9) argued that ‘What pupils who have difficulties need is education, not integration. Placing them in an ordinary school is not an end in itself but a means toward the end of securing them an appropriate education’. This would appear also to be the view of the British government: ‘The needs of individual children are paramount. Where these cannot currently be met in mainstream schools, specialist provision should be available’ (DfEE 1997: 44). So the right of children to an ‘appropriate’ education appears to be being prioritized over their right to be educated in an inclusive school context. In addition, ‘Parents will continue to have the right to express a preference for a special school where they consider this appropriate to their child’s needs’ (1997: 45). The Education Act 1996 explicitly required that these rights and others should be given consideration. Section 316 set out the conditions for educating children with SEN in mainstream, stating that this should not be incompatible with:
• •
parental wishes;
•
the provision of efficient education for the children with whom the children with SEN will be educated;
•
the efficient use of resources.
the children receiving the special educational provision which their learning difficulties call for;
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The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act strengthened the endorsement of inclusion by revising Section 316 of the Education Act 1996. The second bullet point was removed, so mainstream schools were no longer able to refuse a place to a child with SEN on the basis that the school cannot meet the pupil’s needs. In addition, the section was rephrased positively: If a statement is maintained under section 324 for the child, he must be educated in a mainstream school unless it is incompatible with – (a) the wishes of his parent, or (b) the provision of efficient education for other children. Although the Act does not specifically mention children’s rights, the statutory guidance on inclusive schooling (DfES 2001a) makes specific reference to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the child in advising that children who are capable of forming views have a right to express an opinion and have it taken into account in any matters affecting them. The SEN Code of Practice advocates that the views of the child (about their needs and how they would like them to be met) should be sought and taken into account as part of statutory assessment (DfES 2001a: 6). Lindsay (2003) reviews critical perspectives and arguments based on rights and points out that inclusion is only one of several competing values that might be held. It would seem overly simplistic to suggest that there is a clear moral imperative for inclusion, irrespective of all of the other interlinked rights and values considerations. Liu (1995) illustrates ways in which deaf children’s educational, cultural or social needs may not be met in inclusive educational settings where the support provided is not adequate to achieve subsequent self-sufficient participation in society. He argues that proponents of full inclusion often make the mistake of pursuing equal treatment at the expense of equal opportunity and urges that the issue should be approached from a cultural pluralism rather than a disabilities perspective. In this regard, he argues, research has an important contribution to make to the ongoing monitoring of socially defined outcomes and to the development of our understanding of the process variables which aid or impede the achievement of these outcomes.
Activity 4.2
Recognizing rights
Read the following case studies of Tom and Jack. We will be revisiting them several times during this chapter. For now we will focus on rights issues. In each case list what you consider to be the rights of the child and the rights of their parents. Are there any other rights that need to be considered in these cases?
Case study: Tom Tom is a 7-year-old who has Down’s syndrome. His parents are committed to him receiving his education in his local mainstream school. He has attended his local nursery/infant school since the age of 3. He spent the first two years in the nursery class. This year and last year he has been in the Reception class.
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Principles and concepts
Tom’s self-help skills (dressing, feeding, toileting) are similar to most of the other children in the Reception class. However, his language skills are more typical of a 3–4-year-old in that he will talk in short (on average, four- to five-word) ‘telegraphic’ sentences which leave out connecting words – for example, ‘Where Lego box?’ He has no particular friends, but his classmates (especially Vikki, Emma and Sarah) will include him in their play. He clearly enjoys this interaction, although he is always given dependent and subservient roles – the baby, the patient. His teacher finds him a delightful, friendly child. He loves picture books and will join in appropriately with refrains – for example, ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff’ – when familiar stories are read to him. He does not seem to be aware of the function of print in conveying the story. However, he can recognize his own name. He can also produce simple representational drawings; his ‘people’ have heads separate from their bodies, from which the arms and legs originate. His school receives a visit one afternoon per week from a specialist teacher who advises his class teacher and sometimes works with Tom. He has a learning support assistant (LSA) with him each morning, as stipulated on his statement of special educational needs. He has a 20 per cent withdrawal timetable to work in a quiet room with his LSA, mainly on a programme of work devised by the speech and language therapist. He works in the classroom for 80 per cent of the week which includes the Literacy and Numeracy Hours. However, he has his own learning programmes in everything, except project work and PE/games. His teachers fear that he may not be able to make a successful transition to junior school next year. They feel that Tom is making some progress in the Reception class which would probably be disrupted if he were moved to the Year 2 class in preparation for transfer to junior school. They also fear that he may be bullied in junior school and feel that his needs might be best met through placement in a school for children with moderate learning difficulties.
Case study: Jack Jack is a 10-year-old who has a congenital sensorineural hearing loss. His parents and older sister have profound hearing losses and British Sign Language is the family’s first language. However, Jack has a significant level of residual hearing and, with radio aids and developing skill in lip reading, has been able to benefit from the oral/aural approach to education in the hearing impaired resource base attached to his present primary school. Jack is very well motivated and hard working. Although his literacy skills are more typical of an 8-year-old and he is in the bottom literacy and numeracy group in his Year 6 class, he is continuing to make progress. He currently has two 1-hour individual teaching sessions per week in the resource base working on lip reading and other skills. He and the other resource base child in his class receive 3 hours per week of support teaching in class, focused on literacy. He is a skilful footballer and plays for the school team and a local junior team. His speech is intelligible to familiar adults and peers. His best friend is a hearing pupil with whom he also spends a lot of time out of school playing football and fishing. His parents’ wishes for his secondary education are that Jack should join his sister at a residential school for the deaf where he would be educated through a bilingual BSL/English approach. They think this will give him the best chance of getting qualifications and also fear that otherwise he will be unable to relate in adulthood to the deaf community. The social worker for the deaf, who always translates for Jack’s parents when they come to school, strongly supports this
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view. She is concerned that disabling discourses in the mainstream school have already resulted in substantial alienation from deaf culture and feels that Jack would benefit from counselling to help him come to terms with his identity as a deaf adolescent. Jack’s teachers feel that he could continue his education in the oral/aural unit attached to the neighbouring secondary school, but they also feel that they should support Jack’s parents. The resource base teacher knows that the school for the deaf gets very good results with the more able pupils, but is concerned that Jack may not be sufficiently able to really benefit. Jack wants to go the local school, he does not want to leave his family and friends to go to boarding school. When the issue is discussed he becomes very upset and says he just wants to be normal.
Integration and inclusion: research evidence Comparative studies A major research effort, especially in the USA, was initially devoted to examining the efficacy of integrated versus segregated provision. This typically involved comparative studies in which two groups, one integrated and one segregated, were selected for study. Differences in outcomes such as educational attainment, adjustment and self-confidence were measured. Unfortunately these studies suffered from many methodological inadequacies. In particular, children in the ‘integrated’ and ‘segregated’ groups were often only matched for age, sex and IQ even though it is highly likely that there were differences between them on other relevant factors. For example, it might be expected that those children with moderate learning difficulties who were sent to special school were more likely to have behaviour problems and very low academic achievement than those who remained in mainstream. Yet these relevant factors were usually not considered. Important ways in which integrated and segregated placements differed were also often disregarded (Madden and Slavin 1983). For example, the curriculum being followed in each setting was often substantially different, with greater emphasis being placed on academic subjects in mainstream settings and greater emphasis on self-help and social education objectives in special schools and classes. Consideration was rarely given either to the match between the different curricula followed in special and mainstream schools at that time, and the outcome measures on which pupils were compared. Differences between the qualifications and experience of the teachers in mainstream and special placements were rarely examined. Yet these differences were often considerable, particularly in the 1970s when children with severe learning difficulties were first brought into the education system, along with a substantial number of staff who were not qualified teachers but who had worked in the health department training centres previously attended by children with severe learning difficulties. Finally, the most serious methodological difficulty related to the widely differing definitions of ‘integration’ used in different studies and to sizeable differences in the amount and nature of integration between studies. It could occur only in non-academic classes or in core academic subjects such as reading and could last anywhere from a few minutes to
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Principles and concepts the entire day. As can be seen from Table 4.1, ‘segregated’ pupils in some studies were integrated for more of the school day on average than ‘integrated’ pupils in other studies! In the light of these methodological problems it is not surprising that the conclusions of the majority of reviews of comparative studies tend to be phrased very tentatively. Nonetheless the conclusions reported by studies spanning many years and using a range of different approaches are remarkably consistent. Madden and Slavin (1983) identified a small number of methodologically adequate studies in their review of the literature of the time. From these they concluded that there was no evidence that segregated placements promoted either academic or social progress over that made in mainstream placements. Indeed, there appeared to be some advantage to integrated placements, but only if a suitable individualized or differentiated educational programme was offered. Hegarty (1993) summarized the OECD/CERI (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation) review of international research literature on integration efficacy studies across countries and different SEN. He reported that the results were generally inconclusive but argued that the absence of a clear-cut advantage supports integration as it is difficult to justify maintaining segregated provision if it is no better. In addition to these traditional narrative-style literature reviews, a number of meta-analyses have been conducted. A meta-analysis aims to reduce the possibility of reviewer bias by using statistical summary techniques. Baker et al. (1994–5) summarize three such studies (see Table 4.2). Effect sizes were calculated to provide a measure of the strength of the findings which allows comparisons to be made across different studies. The positive effect sizes reported indicate a small to moderate benefit of inclusion on both academic and social outcomes. Table 4.1
What counts as integration? School day spent with mainstream peers (%) Integrated group
Segregated group
Kaufman et al. (1985)
72
31.7
Taylor et al. (1987)
30.5
–
Table 4.2 Effects of inclusive placement – summary of the findings of three meta-analyses Author(s)
Carlberg and Kavale
Wang and Baker
Baker
Year published Time period Number of studies Academic effect size Social effect size
1980 Pre-1980 50 0.15 0.11
1985–6 1975–84 11 0.44 0.11
1994 1983–92 13 0.08 0.28
Source: Baker et al. (1994–5).
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Lindsay (2007) reported a target journal review of published inclusion efficacy studies between 2000 and 2005. Eight journals in the field of SEN were selected and 1373 papers considered. Of these only 1 per cent were found to address efficacy issues, comparing the performance of children with SEN either in special and mainstream settings or in mainstream with typically developing schoolmates. As with the pre-2000 evidence, the weight of evidence from this review was only marginally positive overall. The review concludes that there is a need to research more thoroughly factors that influence optimal education for children with SEN. A more qualitative approach was adopted by Ofsted (2006). Two-day visits were carried out by specialist inspectors to 74 schools across 17 local authorities and case studies were used to examine the progress of pupils with similar needs in different types of provision. While there was little difference found in overall outcomes across different types of provision, mainstream schools with additionally resourced provision tended to get the best outcomes – academic, social and personal. The most important factor associated with progress was found to be quality of provision, not type. Three dimensions of quality in particular were highlighted:
•
Ethos – a focus on academic as well as personal and social development, use of pupil data to drive improvement and staff–pupil relationships of the highest order.
•
Provision of specialist staff – who worked directly with pupils, providing a high level of skilled academic and social support, liaised closely with parents and other professionals and carefully monitored the work of teaching assistants.
•
Focus professional development for all staff – comprising good, continuing, practical training for mainstream staff, including specific training from specialist teachers and outside professionals (where regular). Ready, informal access to specialist colleagues on an ongoing basis was also important.
The efficient education of mainstream pupils In the UK the law requires that the inclusion of pupils with SEN also takes account of the need to provide efficient education for the mainstream pupils involved. Dyson et al. (2004) used information from the UK National Pupil Database to investigate whether there is any relationship between the proportion of pupils with SEN who are included in a school and the educational attainment of the mainstream pupils. Overall it was found that the broad-brush measures of attainment and inclusion used in this study were largely independent, while other factors such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender and first language were found to be much more significantly associated with attainment. Findings were examined at both local authority and school level. At the local authority level, no evidence was found of any relationship between the proportion of pupils with SEN educated in mainstream schools and overall levels of attainment in the local authority when other relevant variables were taken into account. There was some tendency for schools that had higher proportions of pupils at School Action Plus or with statements to achieve lower results in Key Stage tests and public
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Principles and concepts examinations. While a negative causal relationship between inclusion and educational attainment cannot be ruled out, this association could equally be accounted for by the fact that many of these schools were serving disadvantaged populations. Kalambouka et al. (2005) conducted a systematic review of SEN inclusion evaluation studies carried out in other countries (mainly the USA) which reported findings on outcomes for pupils who did not have SEN. Of the 26 studies that met the quality criteria set for the review, the majority had been conducted with primary-aged pupils and focused on academic outcomes. Most findings (53 per cent) indicated a neutral impact of inclusion on academic and/or social outcomes for non-SEN pupils. A positive impact was suggested by 23 per cent of the findings, a negative impact by 15 per cent and a mixed impact by 10 per cent. Further analysis highlighted the following trends:
• •
Findings were more positive for academic than social outcomes.
•
Positive impacts were more often reported from primary contexts where the support offered to pupils with SEN was well managed.
Slightly more mixed outcomes were obtained in secondary schools, where there were very few studies.
Although the research reviewed was drawn from evaluation studies of inclusion, Kalambouka et al. (2005) describe them for the most part as involving ‘minimum effort’ inclusion, where no specific effort had been made to make the inclusion effective for the non-disabled children or to help them adapt to the presence of their SEN peers. They suggest that specific efforts of this kind might contribute further to positive outcomes. Factors in successful inclusion With the consistent conclusion that the quality of the inclusive programme seems crucial, the emphasis in research shifted to identifying the characteristics of effective inclusion. In recent years a range of different studies, conducted in different countries and using different methodologies, have reported conclusions which show substantial overlap (see Table 4.3). Ainscow (1995) drew on findings from the UNESCO Teacher Education Project ‘Special Needs in the Classroom’ in identifying conditions necessary within a school if it is to restructure so as to provide effective education for all. McLaughlin (1995) identified five areas necessary for building a flexible and unified restructured school system from interviews with educational administrators and teachers in 67 school districts in the USA that were actively engaged in educational restructuring. McLaughlin (1995) highlighted in addition the importance of flexibility in teaching and student grouping and pointed out that nothing in the vision of a unified school system precludes students from having individualized instruction at some times. Lipsky and Gartner (1996) analysed the results of the second annual study of inclusive education programmes in the USA which was carried out by the National Center on Educational Restructuring and Inclusion and described factors which appear to be necessary if inclusion is to be successful. Scruggs and Mastropieri (1994) carried out a fine-grained analysis of factors associated with
Inclusion Table 4.3
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Factors in successful inclusion
Identifying author(s)
Factors
Ainscow (1995: 152)
• •
McLaughlin (1995: 206)
• • • • • • • • •
Lipsky and Gartner (1996: 780)
• • • • • • •
Scruggs and Mastropieri (1994: 794–803)
• • • • • • •
Effective leadership, not only by the headteacher, but spread throughout the school Involvement of staff, students and community in school policies and decisions A commitment to collaborative planning Coordination strategies Attention to the potential benefits of inquiry and reflection A policy for staff development Clear vision A set of learner outcomes that can be used for school-wide accountability Governance structures that promote collaboration and school level flexibility A curriculum that promotes high expectations for all students Professional development that builds collaborative work structures, joint problem solving and the sharing of expertise Visionary leadership Collaboration: building planning teams and scheduling time for teachers to work together Refocused use of assessment – developing methods that allow all students to express their learning Support for staff and students Funding models where the funds follow the students Effective parental involvement Curriculum adaptation and adopting of effective instructional practice Administrative support Support from special education personnel Accepting, positive classroom atmosphere Appropriate curriculum Effective general teaching skills Peer assistance Disability-specific teaching skills (e.g. for children with hearing difficulties)
mainstreaming success in primary science lessons for students with hearing, visual and physical difficulties. Over a school year evidence was gathered from classroom observation, videotaped records, student and teacher products, curriculum materials and interviews with students, teachers and administrators. Ofsted (2006) have reported findings which suggest that many of these factors may be important in achieving adequate progress whether pupils with SEN
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Principles and concepts are educated in mainstream or special schools. Key factors for good progress identified were:
• • • •
the involvement of a specialist teacher; good assessment; work tailored to challenge pupils sufficiently; commitment from school leaders to ensure good progress for all pupils.
Provision of additional resources to pupils, including learning support assistant time, did not of itself ensure good-quality intervention or adequate progress. In attempting to identify models and activities associated with inclusive practice and successful attainment, Dyson et al. (2004) conducted case studies of 16 schools, all with high proportions of pupils who had SEN, half primary and half secondary, two-thirds of which were high-achieving and one-third lowachieving. Selection of case study schools was made from national data sets and based solely on their relatively high proportions of pupils with SEN. This contrasts with many published case studies in this area which focus on schools identified because of their espousal of inclusive principles. Clear-cut conclusions proved elusive. Highly inclusive schools, whether higher- or lower-attaining, tend to manage inclusion in similar ways. The proportion of time spent by pupils with SEN in mainstream classes varied from school to school and did not emerge as an important consideration. ‘Mainstream’ class characteristics also varied, for example in relation to use of ‘setting’ in secondary or mixed age classes in primary. Classroom observations failed to uncover any significant differences between high- and low-attaining schools in terms of resources, teaching techniques or organization, apart from finding that a higher proportion of classrooms in the high-attaining schools had access to teaching assistants. While the features of the inclusion models employed seemed to be fairly similar, whether the school was high- or low-attaining, differences were noted in the flexibility with which those features were included in programmes for particular individuals. Flexibility of grouping, customizing of provision to individual circumstances (notably through teaching assistant deployment) and careful individual monitoring, alongside population-wide strategies for raising attainment, were all mentioned. It was concluded that similar activities may be implemented with less sophistication and flexibility in some lower-performing schools. It seemed that high-attaining inclusive schools were characterized by the appropriateness of the approaches used with particular pupils at particular times, rather than by the type of approaches used as such. This is of particular interest as a number of evaluation studies have questioned the extent to which provision intended to be inclusive really is personalized to the needs of individual learners. Inclusion and individual needs? Baker and Zigmond (1995) provided case study descriptions of full-time inclusion models for primary-aged children with specific learning difficulties in five states in the USA. A two-day site visit was made to each centre. Classroom observations were carried out and semi-structured interviews conducted with the children, their
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parents, class teachers, special needs support teachers, heads of special needs and headteachers. It was concluded that students with SEN were receiving a very good general education from enthusiastic class teachers. Special needs teachers were playing roles as coordinator, co-planner and co-teacher and were making it possible for class teachers to feel adequately confident about working with students who have SEN, and for these students to feel adequately confident in their mainstream classes. Class teachers showed a willingness to make changes to help students with SEN, although these consisted of changing an approach for the whole class with the needs of the student with SEN in mind. Very few instances were recorded where adaptations were directed at a single student, and when these did occur they tended to consist of more explicit instructions repeated specifically to the student. Indeed, some teachers expressed the belief that students with SEN had to learn to cope with the world and therefore required them to take the same tests and complete the same assignments as the mainstream students, proudly asserting that they did not individualize or differentiate their work in any way. Similar conclusions were reached by Pijl (1995) who carried out a study that compared the education of students in a highly segregated system (Netherlands) with that in four other countries (Denmark, England, Sweden and the USA). Data was collected from existing written accounts about the availability and use of resources, and interviews were conducted with experts from the first three more inclusive countries listed. From these investigations Pijl offered the tentative conclusion that teachers working in inclusive school systems did not differentiate more than Dutch teachers working in a largely segregated system. However, not all studies have reached similar conclusions. In their comparison of eight different model inclusion programmes, Manset and Semmel (1997) report that the programmes that were most effective in promoting the educational progress of pupils with SEN did incorporate curricular modifications, highly structured teaching (particularly of basic skills) and frequent testing. They also provided opportunities to individualize teaching and focus intensively on particular targets through reducing class size, providing additional staff in the classroom or incorporating peer tutoring. It does seem that such strategies are generally necessary, if not always sufficient, to deliver individualization. Moni et al. (2007) researched the implementation of differentiated instruction in writing across Years 5–9 and found that, in the absence of well-trained learning support assistants, differentiated instruction was only very rarely observed in classrooms, as were use of group activities or peer support. The effective use of additional adults in the classroom, cooperative group work and peer support are key strategies for promoting inclusion and achievement at classroom level and will be considered in more detail in the next section in addition to whole-school transformation initiatives. The other conclusion that can be drawn from this section is about the importance of evaluating outcomes. This will ascertain the appropriateness of particular approaches for individual pupils and will allow changes to be made where necessary. The importance of evaluating outcomes has achieved wider recognition as a result of the prominence given in the Every Child Matters framework to accountability for the quality of services and their success in achieving outcomes for children. Ainscow (2007) advocates the importance of outcome data in informing change. While there are dangers of focusing on what can easily
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Principles and concepts be measured, rather than what is more broadly valued, it is suggested that careful selection of the evidence to be collected should allow the potential of outcome data as a lever for change to be harnessed. In describing the development with local authorities of an inclusion standard, an instrument for evaluating schools’ progress towards becoming more inclusive, Ainscow (2007) places an exclusive focus on pupil outcomes, rather than other variables such as leadership quality or opportunities for participation. While details vary across local authorities, pupil outcomes are commonly assessed in three areas:
•
presence, concerned with where pupils are educated, and how reliably and punctually they attend;
•
participation, which refers to the quality of their experiences and should therefore incorporate pupil views, for example on the extent to which they feel they belong;
•
achievement, which is about the outcomes of learning across the whole curriculum, both inside and outside the classroom.
Particular emphasis is placed on careful monitoring groups of learners who may be at risk of marginalization, exclusion or underachievement, and on taking action as necessary to improve their presence, participation and achievement. Activity 4.3 Evaluating outcomes: presence, participation and achievement Refer back to the case studies of Tom and Jack presented in Activity 4.2 and make an evaluation of the success of their current inclusion in the areas of presence, participation and achievement. Is there any further information you would like to have in order to inform your evaluation? Identify and debate with a partner the priority targets for each child in their current placement and suggest how their achievement could be monitored and evaluated.
Promoting inclusion in a multiethnic society Promoting a whole-school inclusive ethos The statutory guidance, Inclusive Schooling: Children with Special Educational Needs (DfES 2001b: 2), charges schools with ‘actively seeking to remove barriers to learning and participation that can hinder or exclude pupils with special educational needs’, through engendering a sense of community and belonging and developing an inclusive ethos. One approach designed to support these endeavours is the Index for Inclusion (Booth et al. 2000; Booth and Ainscow, 2002). It provides materials designed to be used by schools in their development planning and outlines a process which can involve school staff, governors, pupils, parents and other community members in creating inclusive cultures, producing inclusive policies and evolving inclusive practices in their school. These are designed to minimize barriers to learning and participation related either to SEN or other special needs, and the range of prompt questions contained in the Index
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stimulates reflection across these diverse areas, as the following extract from the Index illustrates: INDICATOR A.1 .1 Everyone is made to feel welcome (i) Is the first contact that people have with the school friendly and welcoming? (ii) Is the school welcoming to all students, including students with impairments, Travellers and asylum seekers? (iii) Is the school welcoming to all parents/carers and other members of its local communities? (iv) Is information about the school accessible to all, irrespective of home language or impairment, for example, translated, Brailled, taped, or in large print, when necessary? (v)
Are sign language and other first language interpreters available when necessary?
(vi) Is it clear from the school brochure and information given to job applicants that responding to the full diversity of students and their backgrounds is part of school routine? (vii) Does the entrance hall reflect all members of the school’s communities? (viii) Does the school celebrate local cultures and communities in signs and displays? (Booth and Ainscow 2002: 42) The Index has generally been positively received both in the UK and abroad (Engelbrecht et al. 2006). Norwich et al. (2001) reported that local authority respondents to a national survey were more positive than critical of it as a means of encouraging school development. Vaughan (2002) supported this view, but pointed out that while schools found it could be a very powerful development process, they also highlighted the difficulties of implementing it alongside the many other demands they faced. The materials have also been used in more focused projects within schools, for example in sampling pupil, parent/carer and school staff views in a local authority initiative to help secondary schools be more inclusive of their Year 7 pupils with SEN (Hodson et al. 2005). However, in reviewing the uptake and implementation of the Index, Rustemier and Booth (2005) suggested that this may have been limited because the values explicitly promoted through the Index conflict in some ways with the government’s predominant approach. One area where there has been higher take-up than expected is in special schools. Booth and Ainscow (2002) report that although the Index was not initially intended for use by special schools, it had been found useful. A set of special school case studies presented by Tutt (2007) illustrate that changing populations have meant that, like mainstream schools, most special schools have had to adapt in recent years to be able to meet a range of needs not previously encountered. Ofsted (2004) reported a 10 per cent increase since 2001 in the number of pupils placed in independent special schools by local authorities as a consequence of the difficulties that mainstream schools, and some special schools, had in meeting
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Principles and concepts severe or complex needs. It is not only mainstream schools that need to undertake self-review and to develop inclusive practice in relation to the diversity of local cultures and communities. Promoting an inclusive ethos in the classroom Cross and Walker-Knight (1997) argue that successful inclusion involves restructuring classrooms to meet all children’s individual needs: ‘inclusive settings must emphasise building a community in which everyone belongs and is accepted and supported by his or her peers and other members of that community while his or her educational needs are being met’ (1997: 269–70). To date there has been comparatively little investigation of the psychological mechanisms underpinning the formation of accepting and supportive attitudes in inclusive settings. Frederickson and Furnham (2004) drew on social exchange theory in accounting for relationships between children’s behavioural characteristics and their peer group acceptance or rejection. In general, children will interact with others where the benefits of interaction (e.g. in terms of interest, enjoyment, access to resources, achievement of success, feeling good about oneself, receiving praise from adults) outweigh the costs (e.g. in terms of compromise, sharing own resources, being the target of undesirable behaviour, risk of peer rejection or exclusion). Different children have different ‘comparison levels’ or cost–benefit ratios for deciding whether to interact with a specific classmate. This may depend both on expectations based on past experience and on factors such as who is available and whether they are likely to agree to play if asked. What Frederickson and Furnham (2004) found was that typically developing 9–12-year-old children were judged very much as would be predicted by the theory. Those who were well accepted by peers were rated as high on beneficial behaviours such as cooperation and leadership and low on costly behaviours such as disruption and excessive help seeking. Those rejected as play or work partners showed the opposite patterns of behaviour. However, when judgements were made about classmates with moderate learning difficulties who were receiving part-time withdrawal support a different, reduced, pattern of associations was apparent involving lower expectations of benefits and higher toleration of costs. The conclusion that, at least in some contexts, children set different, more lenient, standards of behaviour for classmates with SEN has been supported by other studies (Nabuzoka and Smith 1993; Roberts and Zubrick 1992). Children have also been found to treat classmates with SEN more generously when dividing up rewards for work done. Frederickson and Simmonds (2008) gave 10–11-year-olds a task to finish which they were told had been started by one of their classmates, who had done about a third of it. When the classmate was someone they had previously rated as a neutrally regarded acquaintance, children tended to divide stickers with them in proportion to how much of the task each had completed, taking two-thirds themselves and giving their classmate one-third. In contrast, when they were told that the classmate was someone they had identified as a best friend they tended to divide the stickers equally, even though they had ‘earned’ more. The same tendency to divide the stickers equally was also shown when the classmate was a child with SEN (autistic spectrum disorder, included full-time with in-class support), even though none of the children with SEN had been identified as a best friend of the children involved.
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Case studies of relationships between children with SEN and their typically developing classmates also support the view that in many cases these are qualitatively different from relationships between typically developing age-mates. For example, ‘Although there is undeniable warmth between the children, most of the comments and non-verbal interactions reflect a helper–helpee relationship, not a reciprocal friendship’ (Van der Klift and Kunc 2002: 22) and ‘the interactions, although tending to be highly positive, had the feel of a parental type of role on the part of the children without disabilities’ (Evans et al. 1998: 134). GrenotScheyer et al. (1998) found that when typically developing early adolescents talked about their friendships generally, loyalty and intimacy were identified as the defining characteristics. However, when they talked about their friendships with classmates who had significant SEN, a caregiving role was usually prominent. Grenot-Scheyer et al. (1998) challenge the view that friendships must involve full reciprocity and mutuality. They argue for a broader conceptualization of the reciprocal benefits of friendship. Social exchange theory would suggest that where the perceived benefits of a relationship outweigh the costs for both parties there will be positive motivation to interact, even where the benefits are different for each. From their observational and interview study of the inclusion of early adolescents with severe learning difficulties Meyer et al. (1998) identified six ‘frames of friendship’:
•
Ghosts and guests. The pupil with SEN seems either to be ‘invisible’ or is clearly viewed as an ‘outsider’. Language used may draw distinctions between ‘them’ and ‘us’ and reflect adages such as ‘it’s not nice to stare’.
•
The inclusion kid/different friend. This frame is characterized by different, generally more benign, standards of behaviour and consequences. While the language used tends to highlight difference, even when this is negative (e.g. ‘he’s weird’), there is agreement that only positive responses are acceptable. So teenagers who tease others in their social circle will draw a line and indicate that it is not nice to tease people with disabilities. Affectionate social interactions, resembling those that might be engaged in with a small child, are common.
•
I’ll help. Language accompanying a range of helping behaviour was often observed where children adopted the manner and voice of a teacher or adult helper.
•
Just another kid/student. Here expectations were the same (or parallel, with modifications) as for other pupils. Being referred to as ‘just another kid’ tended to lead to neutrally regarded acquaintance status.
•
Regular friend. Not a ‘best friend’, but in the circle of friends just outside that.
•
Best friend. Inner circle, seen outside as well as inside school. Common attribute: ‘I can trust her/him with anything.’
All the constituency groups with whom these frames were discussed – parents, teachers, classmates, university researchers, community activists – saw the ‘regular friend’ and ‘best friend’ frames in a universally positive light, whereas
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Principles and concepts the ‘ghost/guest’ frame was regarded negatively. There were different perspectives on the ‘I’ll help’ frame. Those more distant from everyday life in the classroom tended to view it more negatively. However, it was valued by parents and teachers and was the most common reason given by classmates as to why they named a pupil with severe learning difficulties as a friend. The ‘inclusion kid/different friend’ was regarded predominately positively by parents and teachers, but also by others when they supported a need for protection over and above that typical for a person’s age. ‘Just another kid/student’ was another category that elicited mixed reactions. This was generally seen as an acceptable status to have with some peers, provided that others showed a more positive and proactive approach (otherwise ‘ghost/guest’ status became a risk). However, some constituent group members viewed this frame negatively where they felt that being treated differently was needed as an accommodation for the pupil’s disability. Activity 4.4
Frames of friendship
Refer back to the case studies of Tom and Jack presented in Activity 4.2 and identify which of the frames of friendship described by Meyer et al. (1998) you think apply to these two children in their current schools. Would you want to modify the frames you have selected in any way so they better fit these particular cases? As you read the rest of this section, imagine that it has been decided that Tom will go to the junior school and Jack to the local secondary school next year. Imagine also that you are responsible for planning their induction to their new school. Outline what you would do, and why.
Research informed by attribution theory has shown that how children respond to classmates regarded as ‘different’ is quite complex. Juvonen and Weiner (1993) summarize a series of studies using the model shown in Figure 4.3. Primary-aged children identified a range of characteristics as ‘deviant’ (different and undesirable). While some (aggression, anti-social behaviour, obesity) led to rejection, others (shyness, physical disabilities) elicited a more supportive response. What seemed to be crucial was whether the child was regarded as responsible for the characteristic – whether it was considered to be their fault. Typically primary-aged children considered obesity to be a characteristic within their classmates’ control, so they judged them responsible and were more likely to report anger and less likely to report sympathy towards them. Obese children
Figure 4.3 The relationships between perceived responsibility, emotions and social responses toward classmate ‘deviant’ behaviour Source: Adapted from Juvonen and Weiner (1993).
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were more likely to be rejected and less likely to receive social support, a combination particularly likely to put them at risk of bullying. In contrast, children with physical disabilities were typically not considered responsible for their difficulties and so were more likely to elicit sympathy and social support. This research has important implications for the promotion of inclusion and, in particular, for children with SEN who are less obviously ‘disabled’. Where individual children experience personal costs at the hands of others, attributional processes will be triggered. When a goalkeeper fails to move quickly enough to save a goal, when a tactless comment is made about a new hairstyle, when a child pushes their way to the front of the queue, how others respond will depend on much control they perceive the offender to have over the offending behaviour. If these behaviours are attributed to being lazy, unkind and selfish, anger is likely to be elicited and rejection to result. On the other hand, if classmates have been helped to develop an understanding of the problems typically experienced by children with cerebral palsy, Asperger’s syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and have been told how they can support learning and development, they are less likely to blame the child with SEN. Psychological process models, such as the attributional model shown in Figure 4.3, help to explain disparaties in the literature where most studies report that children with a statement of SEN are less socially accepted than typically developing classmates (Frederickson and Furnham 2004; Gresham and MacMillan, 1997b), but some report equivalent acceptance, particularly so with pupils who have more severe difficulties (Frederickson et al. 2007; Hunt et al. 1996). This is of particular interest where studies reporting better social acceptance for pupils with SEN also report particular efforts to influence peer group attitudes. For example, Hunt et al. (1996) identified and tested a threecomponent programme for promoting the social inclusion in primary schools of pupils with multiple difficulties: informing classmates about special needs pupils, using multiple media to stimulate interaction, and supporting social interactions through a range of strategies such as setting up joint activities or buddy systems. Interviews with classmates and teachers provided evidence of the effectiveness of this intervention in increasing positive interaction between the children with SEN and their peers. The success of a special-school-based inclusion team was evaluated by Frederickson et al. (2007). Fourteen pupils (12 of whom had statements for autistic spectrum disorder) who had been supported by the inclusion team in transferring from a full-time placement in the special school to a full-time placement in a mainstream school local to their home were followed up. In the work of the inclusion team good planning and preparation were stressed, with a phased individual inclusion programme being developed according to each child’s needs (details of the process and supporting resources are available in ‘Practical Pathways to Inclusion’, a package of eight booklets and a CD-ROM produced by Kent County Council in 2003). Social and affective aspects were carefully considered throughout, and it was recognized that peer acceptance was an essential feature of an inclusive school. As a result a peer group package was developed for use with mainstream classes prior to and during the early stages of introduction of pupils from the special school. The package included workshop activities led by an inclusion team member, and the class teacher aimed at peer preparation, the provision of information about similarities and differences, and the promotion
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Principles and concepts of supportive pupil interaction. Evaluation of the social and affective outcomes of the programme found that these 8–11-year-old pupils with SEN did not differ from typically developing classmates in peer-assessed social acceptance or selfreported sense of belonging at school. There is also good evidence of the value of peer preparation for children in the early years. Keller and Sterling-Honig (1993) developed an educational programme for 4–5-year-olds that comprised sessions using stories, videos and doll play on topics such as what it is like to be handicapped, making friends and helping each other. Children who had experienced the programme subsequently showed much higher levels of interaction (seven times higher than children who had not experienced the programme) with preschoolers with SEN who were introduced to their classes. This is an important finding as it is sometimes wrongly assumed that young children either do not notice such differences or are naturally accepting of them. One concern sometimes raised about peer preparation programmes is that they may have the effect of ‘labelling’ the child with SEN and that this will have negative repercussions for them. However, this view is not supported by research findings from well-controlled studies which have consistently shown that a label does not have an influence on peer group attitudes over and above the child’s behaviour which has a strong influence on attitudes (Law et al. 2007). Rather than leave classmates to make their own (often rather negative) attributions for undesirable behaviour, more positive outcomes are likely to result if adults provide advance information, ongoing explanations and appropriately structured and supported opportunities for contact. While peer preparation appears to be helpful in establishing positive social relationships, research has also identified a number of peer-based strategies which can maintain and enhance these while providing ongoing support in the classroom. These are described in the next section. Evidence-based support strategies in the classroom Cooperative learning models are among the best-documented approaches for promoting successful inclusion in classrooms where there is substantial diversity in the student group (Nind et al. 2004). Cross and Walker-Knight (1997) review studies which have focused on inclusive provision for students who have SEN and describe five attributes common to all cooperative learning approaches: 1
Common task or learning activity suitable for group work. The teacher structures a task or activity to accomplish as a group. All members of the group are aware of the task.
2
Small-group learning. Small groups (from two to six students), usually heterogeneous, are organized by the teacher.
3
Cooperative behaviour. Teachers directly teach students the skills they need to work and learn together.
4
Positive interdependence. Teachers structure tasks in such a way that students perceive that they can only attain their goal by working together. Often a team-scoring method is utilized.
5
Individual responsibility and accountability. Students are held individually responsible for the learning that takes place in the group.
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It is clear from this outline that the teacher has a central role in directing the approach. It is suggested that the teacher should intervene both organizationally, in composing the groups to ensure diversity, and by providing additional instruction – for example, in skills necessary for effective group work, such as giving and receiving criticism, encouraging participation and seeking suggestions/assistance. Peer tutoring and support strategies place greater emphasis on active involvement and initiation by students. These have been found to be effective in promoting inclusion both with pupils whose primary needs are in cognition and learning (Stenhoff and Lignugaris-Kraft 2007) and with those for whom behavioural, emotional and social difficulties are primary (Spencer 2006). The essential feature of these approaches is that students are paired up, with one acting as tutor and one as tutee. Improvements have been reported in the self-esteem and academic achievement of both tutee and tutor and in their social interactions with others. The consistent finding that tutors also benefit (Cross and Walker-Knight 1997) is important in that concerns may otherwise be expressed by parents of tutors, or by teachers, that the tutors are being ‘used’ to the detriment of their own learning (Mallon 2000). In some cases cross-age pairings are established where older students, sometimes students with SEN, tutor younger students. More commonly, in-class pairings are established. In some cases classwide peer tutoring (CWPT) is routinely used to reinforce learning with members of the dyad taking it in turn to play the role of tutor, and in the process gaining points for the classroom team to which each pair is assigned (Maheady et al. 2006). This can provide a helpful framework within which particular arrangements for individual pupils involve only small modifications to existing practice for teacher and pupils. The approach has been used with English language learners as well as children with SEN. It has also been used to assist pupils experiencing multiple barriers to learning, alongside their typically developing peers. Saenz et al. (2005) worked on reading skills development with 12 classes of 8–11-year-olds containing Spanish-speaking English language learners in the USA. The classes contained pupils with learning difficulties, together with their low-, average- and high-achieving peers. Six of the 12 classes were selected at random to receive CWPT three times a week for 15 weeks. The intervention classes made significantly more progress than those that did not receive the intervention, and the effects were similar across the four attainment groups of pupils. The primary purpose of CWPT is to increase the time spent by all pupils actively engaged in academic tasks. It also seeks to provide pacing, feedback, immediate error correction and high mastery levels. It has most often been used with literacy learning, but has increasingly been used in a range of other curriculum areas. The guidelines shown in Figure 4.4 involve a focus on reading accuracy and fluency, while the example worksheet shown in Figure 4.5 focuses on comprehension. Peer tutoring directions for the teacher 1 Group students into pairs. Some researchers suggest ranking students by reading levels from 1 to 20, then matching the 1st reader with the 11th reader, the 2nd with the 12th, the 3rd with the 13th, and so on. This results in each pair having a stronger and less strong reader. You may want to select special tutoring partners for your students with SEN.
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2 Teach students how to be both a tutor and a tutee, and provide role-play practice and feedback. 3 Provide special instruction scripts and practice on what you want the tutors to do, including how they should correct errors during oral reading, and how they should record performance and points. 4 Review classroom rules for tutoring. 5 Assign the groups to one of two teams for which they will earn points throughout the tutoring process. 6 Use a timer to tell students to start and stop reading. The stronger reader goes first. 7 Award points for appropriate tutoring and classroom behaviour. 8 At the end of the week, have the students report the number of points earned to determine which team is the winner. 9 Publicly praise both teams for their respective positive performances. 10 At the beginning of the next week, reassign groups to teams.
Peer tutoring directions for the learner For all learners 1 Pick up your tutoring materials, and go to your tutoring place in the classroom. 2 Follow all tutoring rules, including using a quiet voice and being polite with your partner. 3 Find the place where you left off, and begin reading when the teacher starts the timer. For the tutee 1 Read aloud continuously for (time to be designated, e.g. 5–10) minutes from the assigned text to your tutor. 2 Read as much as you can without making mistakes. 3 Once you have read for (time to be designated) minutes, switch roles with the tutor. For the tutor 1 Remember to follow all of the rules for being a good tutor. 2 While the tutee is reading, watch for words missed. 3 If the sentence was read correctly, award (number to be designated) points. 4 If the tutee makes a mistake, point out the word, say it correctly, and have the tutee repeat the word and reread the sentence. 5 Record the reading performance and the appropriate number of points. 6 Once the tutee has read for (time to be designated) minutes, switch roles. Figure 4.4
Classwide peer tutoring example: reading
Source: Mastropieri et al. (1999).
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Figure 4.5
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CWPT reading comprehension: student prompt card
Source: Mathes et al. (1994).
In-class support: extra adults in the classroom Between 1997 and 2003 there was a 99 per cent increase in teaching assistants (TAs) in schools in England (Blatchford et al. 2007). While recognizing that part of this increase was attributable to planned support for the National Strategies and workforce development issues in schools, Howes et al. (2003) considered that the rise in mainstream schools mirrored the growing commitment to inclusion and mainly comprised TAs providing support to pupils with SEN. All the available evidence suggests that teachers have very positive perceptions of the support they receive (Giangreco and Broer 2005; Howes et al. 2003). Information from inspections of primary schools indicated that the quality of teaching in lessons where TAs were present was judged to be higher (Ofsted 2002c), and that this was most apparent when the TA and teacher worked in close partnership or when the TA was following a tightly prescribed intervention or catch-up programme. Nonetheless a range of concerns have been raised about the increasing use of TAs to support inclusion in mainstream classrooms of pupils with SEN (see Figure 4.6). In both the USA and the UK the primary response to such concerns has centred on the provision of improved training and supervision. However, attention to systemic issues has also been given in guidance provided to schools. For example, the Secondary National Strategy Guidance to SENCOs and senior leadership teams on ensuring the progress of pupils with SEN emphasizes joint planning between teacher and TA and encourages the assignment of TAs to particular subject departments to facilitate this.
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Principles and concepts
•
The least qualified personnel are assigned to provide the bulk of instruction and support to students with the most challenging learning characteristics.
•
It is difficult to hire and retain qualified paraprofessionals because they are paid low wages, sometimes without benefits, and report receiving insufficient respect.
•
The scope and nature of paraprofessional work are often compromised by inadequate role clarification, orientation, training and supervision.
•
Excessive one-to-one paraprofessional support has been associated with inadvertent detrimental effects (e.g. unnecessary dependence, stigmatization, interference with peer interactions, interference with teacher involvement, less competent instruction).
•
Virtually no student outcome data exist suggesting that students with disabilities do as well or better in school given paraprofessional supports.
Figure 4.6 Concerns associated with relying on TAs to ensure appropriate education for students with disabilities Source: Giangreco and Broer (2005).
The final bullet point in Figure 4.6 points to the lack of outcome data, but does not specify the type of outcome being considered. If, however, outcomes in the literature are examined using the framework proposed by Ainscow (2007), comprising presence, participation and achievement, some helpful conclusions can be drawn. To begin with presence, the significant role of TAs in the process of supporting pupils who would otherwise have been excluded or placed in the segregated sector is most clearly seen in the case of pupils with behavioural emotional and social difficulties. From a detailed study of ways in which the role of the TA in supporting these pupils had been developed in primary schools in one English local authority, Groom and Rose (2005) report a strong perception from line managers of TAs in schools that their work made a key contribution to successful inclusion. A range of ways in which TAs supported pupils with BESD were identified: supervising individuals or small groups in class, offering pastoral support to individual pupils, teaching individuals in a withdrawal situation, planning activities for small groups, providing structured aspects of programmes such as Circle Time or Emotional Literacy, running groups aimed specifically at raising self-esteem or enhancing social skills, supporting behaviour management plans, observing and recording behaviour to identify and monitor progress towards targets, liaising with parents and liasing with other staff. In addition, in whole-class situations where pupils with BESD were included they played a broader role in facilitating a calm and purposeful atmosphere: keeping pupils on task, helping pupils with their work, helping pupils to resolve conflicts and disputes. From a systematic review of the literature, Howes et al. (2003) conclude that the strongest evidence of the impact of TA support is on pupil participation. This conclusion applied across studies looking at SEN inclusion in a range of different contexts. The results of the review highlighted a link between effectiveness of TA support in promoting inclusion and two other factors: the extent to which TAs were valued, respected and well-integrated members of an educational team and
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the extent to which they avoided an ‘isolated’ style of working with the pupil with SEN and instead supported interactions between them, the teacher and other pupils. These conclusions have since been supported by Blatchford et al. (2007) who found that the presence of a TA in the classroom resulted in more individualized attention, active and sustained interaction and pupil on-task behaviour. Howes et al. (2003) and Blatchford et al. (2007) both reported that the presence of TAs did not have any measurable effect on pupil attainment in the classes where they were deployed. Blatchford et al. (2007) note that the TAs tended to work directly with only a small percentage of the pupils in the class, in particular those with SEN, low attainment or difficult behaviour. They acknowledge, therefore, that examining outcomes for these pupils, rather than for the whole class, might represent a more appropriate test of the impact of TAs on attainment. However, Muijs and Reynolds (2003) looked at the effect of support in maths from specially trained TAs on the achievement of the low-achieving pupils in Years 1 and 2 who had received support. They matched 180 pupils in the project schools with 180 pupils in comparison schools on variables, including free meal eligibility, prior achievement, special needs, ethnicity and gender, and found no difference in progress in mathematics between the two groups. A further possibility raised by Blatchford et al. (2007) is the high degree of variability in TA deployment and effectiveness that was apparent from their case study data. The impact that deployment of additional adults in the classroom can have is well illustrated by a study carried out by Thomas (1992) which used video recordings to analyse the engagement in learning activities of a class of 10–11-year-old pupils. Learning engaged time, or ‘time on task’, is consistently found to be significantly related to pupil achievement. Table 4.4 shows the percentage engagement achieved under three different conditions, the last of which involves a version of ‘room management’. Room management is an approach which gives each adult in the classroom a clearly defined role. In this study two such roles were specified in detail: the individual helper who concentrates on working with an individual on a teaching activity for 5–15 minutes, allowing 4–12 individual teaching sessions to be provided in an hour; and the activity Table 4.4 support
A comparison of pupil engagement with different models of in-class
Condition
Mean level of engagement (%)
Standard deviation
A. The classroom functions normally with one teacher without additional adults
57.8
27.1
B. The same classroom functions with one teacher, a learning support assistant and two parents
69.1
25.3
C. The same classroom functions with the same adults as in B but using room management
90.2
11.0
Source: Thomas (1992).
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Principles and concepts manager who concentrates on the rest of the class, who are normally arranged in groups of between four and eight pupils. The activity manager moves around, keeping the groups focused on their assigned learning activities. In the Thomas (1992) study two parents and a TA worked as activity managers with particular groups of pupils while the teacher operated as an individual helper. In a given session therefore the teacher was not required to simultaneously manage the class and individualize the curriculum for particular pupils. Essentially the results of the study suggested that having extra adults present was better than not having them present, but that their effectiveness could be significantly enhanced by clearly defining their roles. The other issue that is worth noting from this study is that individual work with pupils was undertaken by the teacher. This relates to the variability identified by Blatchford et al. (2007) in TA effectiveness, particularly as TAs were found in a majority of cases to be taking a predominant role in actually teaching the pupils. The fact that it is mostly the neediest pupils who spend time interacting with TAs raises serious questions. There is something paradoxical about the leastqualified staff in schools being left to teach the most educationally needy pupils, and there is concern over whether this provides the most effective support for the children in most need. Teachers, however, raised very few objections about delegating teaching of particular groups or individuals to their TAs. Rather, they welcome the opportunity that it gives them to deal with the remainder of the class (Blatchford et al. 2007: 20). Giangreco and Broer (2005) likewise found that a majority of TAs reported delivering the primary teaching input for pupils with SEN in mainstream classes and frequently making curriculum and teaching decisions without teacher oversight or input. They suggested that schools should consider alternatives to this extensive reliance on TAs, including cost-neutral exchange of some TA posts for a smaller number of specialist teacher posts and developing peer support strategies.
Conclusions Lipsky and Gartner (1996) argue that integration cannot be achieved by ‘allowing’ people of colour (for example) into existing white society, but only by transforming society so that diversity is genuinely valued and normal expectations are not defined by a single group. Inclusive education goes beyond mainstreaming which is founded on the assumption of two separate school systems – a general system and a special system. Also, a restructured inclusive system goes beyond a readiness model which requires that students with SEN prove their readiness to be in an integrated setting, rather than regarding integrated settings as the norm. Whereas the focus of mainstreaming efforts has been individual students with SEN, the focus in inclusive schooling has been the creation of a school environment supportive of all students and including those at risk of school failure for a variety of reasons: SEN, poverty, homelessness, seasonal migration patterns or sociocultural and linguistic differences (Ball and Harry 1993). Unlike mainstreaming, inclusion is considered not a special education programme, but an outcome of school reform. Where inclusion is embraced, educational provision carefully structured to meet a diversity of needs, and flexible, personalized programmes delivered,
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research into social and academic outcomes for pupils with SEN has identified net benefits. Research data have played an important role in identifying ways in which inclusion and learning can be promoted. The importance of evaluation data has increasingly been recognized for monitoring individual students’ progress on an ongoing basis in order to ensure that they receive their full rights – an education that is both inclusive and effective. Activity 4.5
Placement and provision
Refer back to the case studies of Tom and Jack presented in Activity 4.2. Draw up a balance sheet for the placement decision facing each child’s parents: Mainstream school
Special school
Potential advantages Potential barriers to learning and participation Ways of minimizing the barriers and realizing the advantages
Can you ‘think out of the box’ presented above? Are there some novel arrangements of educational support and resources that might present some new possibilities for Tom and Jack?
5 Special educational needs: developmental frameworks
Objectives When you have studied this chapter you should be able to:
• • • • •
describe the key dimensions of human development and explain the disadvantages of categorizing SEN solely in terms of these dimensions; begin to employ the interactive factors framework to outline the basis of SEN for an individual child; recognize the distinctive roles of genetic, biological, cognitive and environmental factors as influences on the development of SEN; identify pathways of development for young people with SEN through childhood and into adulthood; appreciate the growing contributions that genetics and neuroscience are making to our understanding of the development of SEN.
Contents Dimensions of development Case studies of exceptional development
• • •
John Mirza Janet
The interactive factors framework
• • • • •
Biological level Cognitive level Behavioural level Environmental influences Describing individual needs
Further considerations in using the interactive factors framework Pathways of development
• •
The impact of key experiences during childhood The interaction between genes and the environment
Neuroscience and special educational needs Conclusions
Developmental frameworks
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Dimensions of development In any culture, development for most children and young people proceeds in a predictable way that can be traced along five key dimensions: physical development, cognitive development, language development, social development and emotional development (Sharman et al. 2007). Table 5.1 shows typical achievements of a 4-year-old on these dimensions in a Western, English-speaking culture. Clearly the precise expression of developmental achievements will vary with cultural and social context, but within each subculture it will be possible to establish norms of development along these dimensions. Traditionally, SEN have been defined for each child in terms of the developmental dimension which is most obviously or severely impaired. Similar category labels have been used in the past across the world, for example in England and Wales (Brennan 1982), the USA (Haring 1982), the Netherlands (Den Boer 1990) and New Zealand (Department of Education 1981). The category labels that are currently in use in England are mapped onto relevant dimensions of development in Table 5.2. This approach to categorizing SEN appeals to most people’s common-sense view of the situation. It seems obvious, for example, that a person with physical disabilities whose mobility depends on the use of a wheelchair will experience their physical impairment as the most salient aspect of their difficulties. However, in an individual case the picture is frequently more complex than the category labels suggest. Most importantly, children may have strengths and personal qualities that dwarf their primary disability. To define their identity in terms of that problem will be misleading as well as demeaning. Apart from that, children with physical or sensory disabilities may well show problems in other dimensions of development too. These may arise in many different ways:
•
Problems in other developmental dimensions may be a direct consequence of the syndrome causing the ‘primary’ impairment. For example, surveys of children with cerebral palsy have shown that, in addition to their manifest physical difficulties, they tend to have a higher than usual risk of visual and hearing difficulties (Stiers et al. 2002).
•
Problems in other dimensions may also arise as a side-effect of the main difficulties. For example, the obvious problems that children with cerebral palsy experience with the control of movements may also show themselves in speech problems, fatigue and irritability. Speech involves complex motor coordination, and exceptional efforts of motor control exhaust children physically and emotionally.
•
A key factor in additional difficulties may be the attitude of parents or families to the child’s difficulties. For instance, Stone (1995: 25) described a blind baby girl who, for her own protection, was kept by her parents within the confines of a playpen for most of the day: ‘Opportunities to move and explore the environment were very restricted. This child became so fearful of moving that it was some years before she could walk by herself.’
For a teacher, such additional difficulties are of great importance. An educational programme will only be successful if it takes account of the full range of a child’s strengths and needs. So it is important to identify each child’s strengths and needs across all the dimensions of development. Studying the descriptions of
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Principles and concepts Table 5.1
Typical achievements of a 4-year-old along five dimensions of development
Dimension of development
Examples of typical achievements in this dimension of a 4-yearold in a Western, English-speaking culture
Physical
Climbs stairs and descends confidently one foot to a stair. Can dress and undress except laces, ties and back buttons.
Cognitive
Builds tower of 10+ bricks and bridges. Dramatic make-believe play can be sustained for long periods.
Language
Speech intelligible and essentially grammatically correct. May still have difficulty pronouncing w, f, th. Continually asking questions: ‘Why?’, ‘When?’ and ‘How?’
Social
Capable of sharing and taking turns but may cheat in games in order to win. Shows sympathy for friends who are hurt.
Emotional
Becoming more independent and self-willed, which can lead to conflict. Can show sensitivity to other children and adults.
Source: Adapted from Sharman et al. (2007: 161–2).
Table 5.2
SEN categories and dimensions of development
Dimension of development
SEN category
Physical
Visual impairment Hearing impairment Multi-sensory impairment Physical disability
Cognitive
Specific learning difficulty Moderate learning difficulty Severe learning difficulty Profound and multiple learning difficulty
Language
Speech, language and communication needs
Social
Behaviour, emotional and social difficulty
Emotional
Behaviour, emotional and social difficulty
Multiple dimensions
Autistic spectrum disorder Other difficulty/disability
children in the next section will illustrate this point. You will also note there examples of environmental and social factors that interact with the children’s disabilities and learning difficulties in ways that have a substantial impact on their learning. Commentators such as Dyson (2002) and Norwich (2007) in the UK and Truscott et al. (2005) in the USA have argued for the replacement of traditional
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SEN category systems in order to take account of the range of important influences on children’s development more effectively. Activity 5.1
Identifying dimensions of difficulty for children with SEN
For each child described in the next section identify the major dimension in which they show SEN and also the other dimensions in which they appear to show particular strengths or needs.
Case studies of exceptional development John John, who is 6 years old, is described by his mother as ‘driving me mad’. He is constantly restless and does not sit still even to watch noisy action movies which he loves. He is the youngest of three children, born when his two sisters were in their teens. ‘We hadn’t planned him,’ his mother says, ‘but we were delighted when he came, especially when he turned out to be a boy. My husband dotes on him. But then he’s always away driving and doesn’t have to put up with his noise and his clumsiness 24 hours a day.’ The family live in a neat, three-bedroomed house in a pleasant suburb of a small town in the south of Scotland. The parents both grew up in the town, and their parents live nearby. Their daughters are both now away from home most of the time, one in the armed forces and the other at university. When they come home for a few weeks at a time, they find John’s behavour wearing and frustrating, and the elder one is critical of her parents for not controlling him better. In school John is constantly in trouble with his peers for interfering in their games. The teacher comments that he seems to lack the social skills to negotiate his way out of trouble and that he does not mean any harm but ‘somehow causes chaos wherever he is’. He is not aware of how he is seen by others and ‘seems a happy child with good self-esteem’. However, he is beginning to be aware that he is falling behind in basic academic skills. His concentration is weak, and he does not appear to have benefited from the school’s systematic teaching of literacy and numeracy. Mirza During a period when there was extensive fighting in Bosnia, Mirza and her mother arrived in the South-East of England as asylum seekers. After a short time they were placed in a hostel for refugees in a small coastal town, and Mirza was admitted to a school in the area at the age of 10. She had missed a great deal of schooling in the past because of the hostilities. She now appears to have considerable difficulties in settling down into the routines of her new school. She is seen as immature by her classmates and has made very slow progress in learning English, in spite of regular small-group teaching by a school-based teacher from the local English language support service. The family’s first language, which they use together and with one other Bosnian family in the hostel, is Serbo-Croat. Mirza has very poor eyesight, which was not treated until some time after her move to the UK. The cause of the
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Principles and concepts difficulty was macular degeneration. Her mother reported through an interpreter that her vision had appeared normal during her early years. But when she was about 6, it deteriorated first in one eye and then in the other. She could still see out of the corner of her eye quite well and managed without too much difficulty, except when she had to do close work. By that time medical services were limited in the area where they lived, and nothing was done about the problem. The family had other preoccupations when they first arrived in the UK, but once Mirza was referred to a specialist clinic the diagnosis was made quickly and advice on management helped a good deal. The macula is a tiny area in the centre of the retina of the eye. It must have been destroyed by illness or an accident. The family cannot now say exactly when or how that might have happened. The effect is to impair Mirza’s fine central vision. Good contrast in the stimulus she is looking at helps her to make it out. So she is not very good with newspapers but manages well with large print books at school. Her class teacher is now trying to ease her slowly towards using smaller print. But her poor progress in learning English as a spoken language inhibits advances in reading as well. The teacher finds it hard to decide whether her problems with books that have normal-sized print are wholly attributable to her visual defect or are partly caused by her limited English vocabulary. Janet Janet, who is 10 years old, lives alone with her unemployed mother. They moved a few years ago into a decaying post-war estate on the edge of a small industrial town in the North-East of England. A group of families arrived there together, rehoused from one street in Newcastle when it was demolished for redevelopment. Janet, like her mother, appears overweight, slow-moving and slow-thinking. There is a question mark about her hearing, as she often seems to look vacant during whole-class sessions in school. But her mother has failed appointments for hearing tests. In the Year 6 classroom Janet rarely speaks unless spoken to. She is teased by most children in her class but protected by a small, lively group of girls whose streetwise leader, Stephanie, is the daughter of a neighbour. In the company of this group, when Stephanie is present, Janet will participate clumsily in playground skipping games and suchlike. But if Stephanie is absent (which is not uncommon), she will often be on her own in the playground. She made good progress in reading with small-group help during Year 5, though her comprehension lags behind her ability to decode print and read aloud. At this stage most of her attainments are far behind the rest of the class. In maths and in any kind of project work she will sit passively and achieve very little output. Her teacher, an energetic and committed young man, pronounces himself at a loss as to how to break into what he sees as a cycle of self-reinforcing educational failure and increasing social isolation.
The interactive factors framework As these case studies illustrate, SEN are diverse and develop in many different ways. The main questions to be addressed in this chapter are how individual
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patterns of SEN develop and whether there is a simple framework that can accommodate the different accounts and explanations that are given. Our starting point is a framework for causal modelling which was developed by Morton and Frith (1995). We believe that their approach has a particular advantage in the context with which we are concerned, because it aims to accommodate diverse perspectives on the pathways that development may take. Morton and Frith aimed to create a simple visual aid to make it easier for people to communicate about developmental problems. Frith (1995: 6) suggested that their graphic schema can act ‘as a map, largely white, in unknown territory’ which will hint at where to look for landmarks. The framework can be used to represent all theories of development or difficulties in development in a neutral fashion. Morton (2004) has reviewed its use in developmental research. The examples below focus on reading problems, but the framework can be used for any type of difficulty. Figure 5.1, which is reproduced from Frith (1997), shows a causal model of dyslexia (severe and persistent reading difficulties). It can be seen that the framework uses three levels of description to explain developmental problems: the biological level, the cognitive level and the behavioural level. Arrows indicate a hypothesized causal chain. In addition, the framework recognizes the operation of environmental factors at all three levels, as ‘this chain of causal links from brain to mind to behaviour has to be set within the context of environmental and cultural influences’ (Frith 1997: 2). These influences may sometimes be of critical importance for exceptional children in a society that is ethnically and culturally heterogeneous. Biological level The biological level box can be used to record observations about the brain and about sensory processes such as hearing and vision. In Figure 5.1 an abnormality in the perisylvian region of the left hemisphere of the brain is represented at the biological level. If a brain abnormality is thought to be caused by a genetic factor,
Figure 5.1
Causal model of dyslexia as a phonological deficit
Source: Frith (1997).
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Principles and concepts this genetic factor can also be shown in the biological level box, and an arrow drawn from it to the brain abnormality. Brain functioning may also be influenced by environmental factors such as quality of nutrition or levels of toxins, and by environmental interventions such as the use of a cochlear implant as an intervention for sensorineural hearing loss. A fuller discussion of processes and influences at the biological level may be found in the sections on genetics and neuroscience later in this chapter. Cognitive level Where it is hypothesized that there are within-child causes of poor performance, they are placed in the cognitive level box. Cognitive skills or deficits cannot be directly observed but must be inferred from observed behavioural data. The inferred and hypothetical underlying cognitive deficits are different in different theories. Figure 5.1 shows the central explanatory role given in this theory of dyslexia to what is hypothesized to be a phonological deficit, where difficulties are experienced in identifying and manipulating sounds within words. Morton and Frith (1995) also included affective factors at the cognitive level. An argument could be made for placing affects in the biological level box (as physiological responses) or in the behavioural level box (as facial expressions, voice modulations, etc.). But the cognitive level is crucial in ascribing meaning to affects and explaining their influence on mental activities and behaviour. Again the environment plays an important role. Frith (1997) pointed out that whether a cognitive or affective difficulty will result in literacy problems will not just depend on the nature and severity of the problem but on interactions with environmental factors such as the complexity of the writing system involved. Hence children with dyslexia display different patterns of errors in reading and writing if they are learning to read languages such as German or Dutch, where the process of mapping sounds onto letters, establishing grapheme–phoneme correspondences, is comparatively straightforward, than do those who are learning to read English, which is more complex in this respect (Ziegler and Goswami 2005). Behavioural level Observations and facts about poor performance in reading and spelling activities and/or tests are represented in the behavioural level box. We can directly observe behaviour such as incorrect spelling, words read inaccurately or poor performance in naming and memory tests. Of course, any observations and data that are collected will be affected by a range of environmental factors (such as the work ethos in the classroom). In addition, within-child factors other than those directly related to literacy difficulties (such as motivation) are also open to environmental influences. Environmental influences Further examples of environmental influences are given in Figures 5.2 and 5.3 (reproduced from Frith, 1995). These figures also illustrate the way in which the causal modelling framework can be used very simply to represent general ideas in
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Example of compensation
Source: Frith (1995).
outline, without including much detail. In Figure 5.2 you will see that the child had a cognitive deficit that was expected to lead to reading problems, but the provision of remedial teaching was successful and there was therefore no ‘behavioural sign’ of poor reading. Frith (1995: 8) described this as ‘an example of compensation: here remedial teaching is shown to give a protective effect’. In Figure 5.3 a child who shows no problems at the biological or cognitive levels nonetheless is making poor progress in reading. Frith claims that ‘more economically than I can do it in words, I can use the diagram to declare just what I assume the critical factors and relationships to be’. In these theoretical models produced by developmental psychologists and neuropsychologists the contribution of the environment is acknowledged throughout. But that contribution is often poorly specified because of the wide variability that would have to be represented. When one comes to look at individual differences and individual needs, that variability is of crucial importance. Morton and Frith (1995) and Krol et al. (2004) suggested that these diagrams could also be used to describe particular individuals. Frederickson (1997) reported that this had been done successfully by educational psychologists in training, Cameron and Monsen (2005) illustrated the process in a case study of a 10-year-old boy who had been referred for a statutory SEN assessment, and Frederickson et al. (2008: Figure 1.2) applied it to a 6-year-old with a complex pattern of learning and behaviour problems. A couple of modifications had been made to the framework to facilitate the description of individual children.
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Figure 5.3
Example of poor reading due to emotional causes, not dyslexia
Source: Frith (1995).
Describing individual needs An example of what is now called the interactive factors (IF) framework is presented in Figure 5.4. Instead of showing the biological, cognitive, behavioural and environmental factors that are characteristic of a specified developmental difficulty, the model for a particular individual represents what is known about the complexity of that individual’s particular pattern of strengths and needs. It also shows the environmental and other factors which are thought to be influencing the individual’s learning and development. It is often hard to be sure about some of the influences that are identified because any ideas about them will typically be based on a limited amount of information. However, a hypothesis about particular influences can be used to guide intervention. Then an evaluation of the individual’s response to intervention will show whether they are accurate and useful. For example, in Figure 5.4 the individual’s literacy difficulties are thought to be exacerbated by high levels of off-task behaviour resulting from ineffective classroom management. An intervention to improve classroom management would be expected to reduce levels of off-task behaviour and improve performance on literacy tasks. If subsequent evaluation confirms that this is the case, then the accuracy and usefulness of the model would be supported. However, if the predicted outcomes are not achieved, then further investigation is likely to be needed, leading to a revision of the model. By comparing Figure 5.4 with Figure 5.1 you can see the slight changes that have been made to Morton and Frith’s framework. There is, first of all, much
Interactive factors framework
Source: Frederickson and Cameron (1999).
Figure 5.4
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Principles and concepts greater conceptual space given to environmental factors. This includes the recognition that the environment is also the source of all intervention and management efforts. Figure 5.4 shows that intervention and management strategies might be targeted at all three levels of the framework: decongestant medication at the biological level, instruction in memory strategies and teaching of letter–sound (grapheme–phoneme) correspondences at the cognitive level, and the introduction of classroom management techniques at the behavioural level. Figure 5.4 represents an individual within their environment. Just as Morton and Frith (1995) suggest that it is helpful to consider different levels of analysis of individual functioning, so Bronfenbrenner (1979: 3) has suggested that it is helpful to conceive of the environment as ‘a set of nested structures, each contained inside the next like a set of Russian dolls’. Four levels are identified in this broader and more differentiated conception of the environment in a model which he now terms the bioecological model (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 2006):
•
A microsystem is a pattern of activities, roles and interpersonal relations experienced by a child in a given setting. The home, classroom and playground would all be examples of settings within which children actively participate.
•
A mesosystem describes the relationships between two or more settings in which a child actively participates – for example, the relationships between home and school, between neighbourhood and peer group.
•
An exosystem refers to one or more settings that do not involve a child directly as an active participant but which affect or are affected by what happens in settings that do involve the child. Examples of exosystems might be the work setting of the child’s parent(s) or the LEA.
•
The macrosystem refers to consistencies in the other systems that exist or could exist at the level of the subculture or culture as a whole, together with belief systems underlying any such consistencies. Within a given society (e.g. Britain, France, Japan) settings such as school classrooms, restaurants or home–school relationships will share certain features, along which the settings differ across cultures.
Gibbs and Huang (1989) point out that Bronfenbrenner’s perspective is particularly relevant in analysing the influence of factors such as poverty, discrimination and immigration on the psychosocial development of children and young people from minority cultural groups. For example, Lynch and Cicchetti (2002) studied links between children’s exposure to violence in a low-income urban neighbourhood in the USA and their sense of security in their relationship with their mother inside the family. Children aged 7–13 who reported that they had been exposed to high levels of community violence also indicated that they felt less positive when with their mother, less close to her and more anxious when separated from her. In addition, they reported higher rates of what they saw as negative behaviour on the part of their mother (e.g. taking things away from them if they misbehaved). These correlations may have arisen because the level of community violence in the area had an adverse effect on the caregivers’ parenting on account of the stress that it caused them. Or it could be the case that children who
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felt insecure with their caregivers perceived the external environment as more threatening as a result. Because the design of this investigation meant that the children were not studied over time as they grew up, it was impossible to be sure about the causal pattern. However, their findings support the central idea in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory that children’s psychological development is crucially affected by interactions between the different levels in his model. (For a review that used this model to organize research on educational inclusion, see Odom et al. 2004.) A further illustration of these processes arises when families move to another country so that children are exposed to different sets of values and norms in new settings, and there are potential areas of conflicting expectations. Thus one source of stress for Mirza, who was described above, has been the different views on food and diet of her peer group at school and her mother at home. Tensions between home and school values may take many forms within a diverse society. For example, it has been argued that one of the problems faced by Gypsy children in school is that they develop a distinctive spatial awareness in the site environments where they live and then find it difficult to accommodate to the expectations that are imposed on them about how social space should be used in school. A study of Gypsy children attending a small sample of primary schools in the South-West of England showed that ‘certain uses of space, which might appear anti-social and disruptive to schools, might equally be perceived as a reflection of behaviour in the home environment’. Examples that were reported to them included pupils from Traveller families crossing boundaries in school at forbidden times to check on younger family members and trying to colonize certain spaces around the school as being ‘safe’ for their group (Levinson and Sparkes 2005: 768–9). A further difference between the framework employed in this book and the original framework developed by Morton and Frith (1995) can be seen in the use of slightly different terminology such as ‘interactive factors framework’ rather than ‘causal modelling framework’. While Morton and Frith had emphasized that causal links in the modelling process are not determinant, it was found that use of the word ‘causal’ could prove confusing when professionals were developing tentative representations of the factors thought to be affecting an individual child. In this age of acronyms, the title ‘IF framework’ seems particularly apt given that a major purpose is to represent working hypotheses about the nature of children’s needs. Professionals working with an individual can ask ‘If the child’s learning is being influenced in this way, what are the implications for teaching and management?’. The evaluation of the intervention they design will show whether their working hypothesis is a useful guide to practice. The focus on interactive factors is also important, given the points made in the opening section of this chapter about the complex and multi-faceted nature of individual children’s needs. On the basis of Figure 5.4 we would not expect an intervention at one level alone to be enough to meet the child’s needs. For example, the introduction of more effective classroom management techniques alone would not have a sufficient impact on the child’s literacy skills in the absence of appropriately individualized teaching. Similarly, it is unlikely that individualized teaching of letter– sound correspondences on its own would result in improved reading and spelling performance in the classroom unless the ineffective management is also addressed. In this book we will return to the causal modelling framework in describing different theories of particular developmental difficulties. We will also use the IF
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Principles and concepts framework in describing the complex difficulties experienced by individual children and the ways in which professionals working with them can attempt to understand and meet their needs. Activity 5.2
Applying the IF framework to individual cases
(a) Reread the account of Janet in the previous section. Can you draft an IF framework to show what her current reading difficulties are and how they may have developed? (b) Repeat the process for a child known to you professionally or personally. (c) Show your two diagrams to a friend or colleague and ask them to tell you in words what they think is the nature of each child’s difficulties and what lies behind them. Does their verbal account agree with what you would have said yourself?
Further considerations in using the interactive factors framework Morton and Frith (1995: 359) argued that, when constructing a model of how a serious problem develops, it is essential to ‘start with biology’. This will be important even if the precise disturbance to the brain system is not fully understood. For example, when childhood autism was first identified, an influential theory suggested that the family’s style of interaction might be a key factor in the development of the symptoms. Over recent years evidence has accumulated that the condition in fact has a biological origin (see Chapter 11). If professionals continue to suggest that a mother’s manner in handling her child may be the cause of his or her strange behaviour and social isolation, it is not only misleading and unhelpful, but also potentially very damaging. Another example is the group of children with problems of attention and activity labelled as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). John, who was described earlier, is an example of a child with this pattern of difficulties. Some educationists treat ADHD as a wholly educational issue. They assume that, if appropriate classroom management strategies are adopted, the children’s behaviour will be controlled and their attention will be focused (Cooper 1997). Unfortunately this is sometimes too optimistic: neuropsychological factors make it so difficult for some children to inhibit impulsive behaviour that changing the approach to classroom management will not, on its own, enable them to sustain concentration on schoolwork. If key factors are involved at the biological level it may not be effective to intervene solely at the behavioural or cognitive level. However, saying that we should ‘start with biology’ does not mean that we should give attention only to biological factors. The intensity of a child’s problems of attention with ADHD may be affected by what they or others think about the causes of their difficulties. So cognitive processes mediate the impact of biological factors. In turn, the views of the child and parents will be affected by external environmental factors such as social and economic pressures on the family and expectations about children’s behaviour that are prevalent in the general community.
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The impact of environmental factors may operate at a broader level as well as in the subtle ways implied in the example of ADHD. When socioeconomic differences within a society are extreme, the incidence of different types of mental and physical handicap will reflect this. For instance, in a series of studies in the area of Cape Town in South Africa, Molteno and his colleagues showed that the proportion of children developing severe SEN after birth was higher in the African population than in the coloured population and lowest among white children (see Table 5.3). The incidence of postnatal disabilities in the white group was comparable to what had been recorded in other developed countries. It was evident that the higher rates among the other groups in the same area were not linked to some ethnic disadvantage but were a consequence of their worse socioeconomic conditions. For example, children were more likely to develop diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and measles in these groups, and also more likely, once they had these illnesses, to develop secondary cerebral infections leading to disability (Arens and Molteno 1989; Molteno et al. 1990; Donald 1994). (For a review of research on early adversity and developmental disorders in Western societies, see Taylor and Rogers, 2005.) Thus environmental factors may influence development in a range of different ways. We will illustrate this further with an outline framework that was used by Cline and Baldwin (2004) to show ways in which selective mutism can develop in childhood. Selective mutism is the term used to describe a phenomenon in which children who are able to speak and do speak in some situations (e.g. home) persist in remaining silent in some other settings (e.g. school). It appears to develop most often around 3–6 years of age when children are moving out of their family homes into a different kind of setting outside the family, such as a playgroup or nursery or school. (For a fuller account, see Chapter 10.) Table 5.4 presents a summary of how selective mutism may develop. Note that the community (including school) as well as the child and the family may play a part in the process. It is usual to distinguish between three ways in which factors may influence psychological events. Firstly, there are disposing factors, which create a situation that is favourable to the development of the behaviour. At the community level a significant social distance may be maintained between families or groups in a rural community or between ethnic or linguistic groups in an urban community. Within the family some older family members may model shyness or mutism or may encourage these patterns of behaviour, especially in contact with people outside the household. At a personal level the child may have a temperamental disposition towards shyness,
Table 5.3 Proportion of children in Cape Town with mental handicap or cerebral palsy for whom postnatal causes had been identified Population
Mental handicap (%)
Cerebral palsy (%)
African Coloured White
21.7 13.6 9.8
36.1 24.0 13.2
Source: Donald (1994).
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Principles and concepts Table 5.4
Summary of how selective mutism may develop
Factors
The community
The family
Disposing
Family is isolated or marginalized in the community.
Parents have personal experience and/or a family tradition of silence/ reticence. Factors within the family encourage mutism as a reaction to challenge.
Precipitating
Maintaining
The child
Factors within the child favour mutism as a reaction to challenge The child faces a challenging transition to the outside world (or other stressful challenge) and reacts by withholding speech.
Reactions from adults and peers reinforce mutism.
Reactions from family members reinforce mutism.
The child experiences reduced anxiety and secondary gains.
Source: Cline and Baldwin (2004).
timidity and fearfulness or may have failed to develop the level of independence from one or both of their parents that would be considered appropriate for their age within their culture. Secondly, there are precipitating factors, which trigger the behaviour on the first few occasions when it occurs. For some children these may include starting to attend an institution outside the home such as a nursery, playgroup or school. Thirdly, there are maintaining factors, which encourage the persistence of the behaviour pattern. Adults and peers inside and outside the home (including school) may treat selectively mute children as special and unusual, convey the expectation that they will remain mute and respond to their non-verbal communication readily in such a way that it is reinforced. The children themselves may come to relish their own uniqueness, hold a self-image as a mute person, and become fearful of the consequences of speaking. It seems most likely that selective mutism will develop when some factors are present at each of the levels – the community, the family and the child. However, it may occur when only two levels (or even one level) are implicated. However, the development of a particular pattern of difficulty is often ‘over-determined’, i.e. caused by several interacting factors (cf. Figure 5.4). The IF framework is helpful not only in depicting the status of each factor but also in attempting to show how they may have formed a causal chain. These frameworks do not highlight an important set of factors that have received increasing attention in recent years – protective factors (or sources of
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‘resilience’). Why is it that many people who suffer potentially very damaging experiences when they are young appear to show no negative consequences in their later development? For example, Collishaw et al. (2007) followed up a large group of adults in their early forties who had originally been interviewed as part of a population study of children in the Isle of Wight in 1964. Ten per cent of the sample reported that they had been physically or sexually abused during childhood. Many of those showed increased rates of psychological problems in adolescence or in adult life: they were more likely to report that they had had recurrent depression, had attempted suicide at some point or had become involved in substance abuse. But nearly half of those who had experienced abuse in childhood did not report significant psychological problems over a 30-year follow-up period and also demonstrated positive adaptation in other domains (employing diverse measures such as the stability of an individual’s relationships over time, their reported involvement in crime and their self-ratings of their health). What enables some individuals to be so resilient in the face of adversity? Rutter (2007a) has argued that resilience cannot simply be an inherent personality trait and that it is likely to involve:
•
the mental sets that individuals have when faced with challenges and the coping strategies that they employ in order to deal with them;
•
genetic susceptibility or resistance to environmental risk or more generally to environmental change (perhaps expressed in physiological responses to an environmental hazard, e.g. through neuroendocrine functioning);
•
the nature of a person’s experiences following exposure to risk (e.g. in their relationships with others both inside and outside the family).
Thus an understanding of resilience requires ‘a shift from a focus on external (or for that matter internal) risks to a focus on how these risks are dealt with by the individual’ (2007a: 207). That advice should be borne in mind as we move in the next section to examine ‘pathways of development’ in more detail.
Activity 5.3
Analysing factors that underlie Mirza’s difficulties at school
Re-examine the account of Mirza that was given earlier in the chapter and decide what might appropriately be written in the cells of this table to summarize factors underlying her current difficulties at school. The community Disposing factors Protective factors Precipitating factors Maintaining factors
The family
The school
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Principles and concepts
Pathways of development The impact of key experiences during childhood Over the last 60 years the prevailing climate of opinion among researchers has shifted more than once. During the period following World War II an image was presented of a high degree of consistency in personality: children were seen as being born with certain fixed characteristics which changed little over time, though very adverse factors in the early years, such as ‘maternal deprivation’, might impair development. This simplistic view was challenged during the 1960s and 1970s when it became clear that the way people develop was more varied and unpredictable than had been thought (Clarke and Clarke 1976). Commentators such as Mischel (1969) highlighted evidence that behaviour is often situationspecific: a person will behave quite differently in different circumstances. Moss and Susman (1980: 590) summarized indications from longitudinal research as showing that some problems persist and others fade away: Severe disturbances tend to be long-standing, whereas isolated symptoms and mild reactions tend to be transitory. This difference in the persistence of severe and mild reactions may be based on the probability that severe disturbances are likely to reflect a fundamental and pervasive personality problem that is tied to the psychobiological history of the individual. Isolated symptoms are more likely to reflect temporary stress reactions to passing situations and ephemeral developmental demands. In recent years evidence has accumulated that there are both continuities and discontinuities in development. There has been growing interest in analysing pathways of development in greater detail to show how both stability and change may be seen in individual cases. Rutter (1989) reviewed a number of factors that may affect vulnerable children over their life span. We will illustrate his analysis by examining one factor in particular – the effectiveness of the school the child attends in early adolescence. The criterion of effectiveness in these studies was not the school’s success with a particular pupil but general outcome measures for all its pupils. Figure 5.5 presents a simplified summary of data on the employment record of young people one year after leaving school. There was no direct relationship between attending one of the less effective schools in their sample and moving into unskilled work or having a poor employment record. But if a child attended one of the less effective schools they were twice as likely to attend poorly, and if their attendance was poor they were twice as likely to leave school early without sitting national examinations. That had an impact on how well qualified they were, which in turn affected their work record. As the research on resilience at an earlier stage in child development showed, young children are both vulnerable and robust. For example, studies of national and international adoption have shown that, even when children have had deeply damaging early experiences in a maltreating family or a neglectful orphanage, adoption into a new family can lead to substantial recovery in terms of physical growth, emotional security, cognitive development, school achievement, selfesteem and behavioural adjustment (van Ijzendoom and Juffer 2006). That review, which involved the meta-analysis of more than 270 studies, indicated
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Figure 5.5 Simplified pathway from poor schooling to poor job success; 2× means ‘twice as likely to lead to . . .’ Source: Rutter (1989), citing Gray et al. (1980).
that this ‘catching up’ process is likely to be more complete if the child is adopted before the age of 12 months – a finding that suggests that, while there is a surprising degree of plasticity in human development, there are also sensitive periods. The notion of ‘critical periods’ has been recognized in developmental psychology and biology for almost a century. The classic example was the demonstration by Konrad Lorenz of how young geese came to treat him as their mother and follow him around. During a critical (or sensitive) period specific neuronal systems are particularly susceptible to modification by experience. Lorenz’s geese went through an imprinting process on him because they saw him during a critical period shortly after birth and did not see any adult geese at that time. Educationists have sometimes applied the concept of a critical period rather loosely to varied kinds of learning without any systematic evidence. There is no doubt that such windows of opportunity exist in specific areas of development (Hensch 2004). For example, human infants are uniquely sensitive to language input, but behavioural observation and brain imaging techniques have shown that their sensitivity to various features in what they hear decreases as they move through childhood. The interaction between genes and the environment In human beings genetic instructions for reproduction are handed down from parent to child through the genes that are contained in 46 chromosomes. These chromosomes are inherited as 22 matching pairs with one extra pair, the sex chromosomes, which match in the case of females, who have two X chromosomes, but not in the case of males, who have one X and one Y chromosome. Genetic factors are implicated in many developmental problems, though the causative route has been identified in only a small number of conditions so far. Classic examples of conditions with a well-defined genetic basis are Down’s syndrome (where children have an extra 21st chromosome) and fragile X syndrome (where the X chromosome looks as if it has one end breaking off because of an
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Principles and concepts abnormal gene in a particular location). Down’s syndrome is not inherited from the parents but occurs because one chromosome fails to divide normally during conception. Fragile X syndrome, on the other hand, is inherited with the X chromosome. Each of these conditions is associated with an increased risk of general learning difficulties (Carr 1988; Dew-Hughes 2004). Chromosomal abnormalities of that kind are the most widely known types of genetic disorder. That has sometimes led to a deterministic, even fatalistic, attitude to such conditions. Developmental research has increasingly challenged such assumptions: 1
Most developmental problems that have a genetic component cannot be attributed to a single malfunctioning gene. The image of a ‘gene for autism’ or a ‘gene for ADHD’ is simply wrong (Kendler 2005).
2
There is increasing evidence of interaction between genes and the environment which undermines a simple, deterministic view of how a genetic disorder may influence development. For example, Taylor et al. (2006) studied a non-clinical group of young men and women in California and identified those who might be vulnerable to depression. They each had a genetic predisposition – a short form of the 5-HTTLPR gene. Earlier research had identified an association between that gene and elevated risk for depression. Those participants in the Californian study who had the gene were significantly less likely to report depressive symptoms as a young adult if they had been brought up in a supportive family as a child. The effects of their upbringing appeared to be successful in protecting them against the risk associated with the gene which they continued to carry.
3
That example implies an impact on the child’s development from the family environment that modifies the influence of a genetic predisposition. There is suggestive evidence too of an interactive process that operates in the opposite direction. Ge et al. (1996) showed that adopted children whose biological parents had behaved in anti-social ways or had been dependent on drugs or alcohol were more likely to have adoptive parents who treated them harshly and were inconsistent in their approach to discipline with them. This appeared to have come about because the children’s disruptive behaviour had elicited negative parenting from them. In this case the specific genetic mechanisms have not been identified, but the origins of the children’s behaviour appeared to lie partly in their genetic make-up (as indicated in their biological parents’ record of anti-social behaviour and addiction).
Recent progress in behavioural genetics has arisen not only through technical advances but also because of a shift in the scientists’ theoretical and conceptual grasp of the phenomena they are investigating. Understanding the role of ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ in the development of special educational needs or human intelligence is no longer viewed as a matter of measuring the heritability of different conditions and functions, that is, the proportion of variance between individuals that can be attributed to genetic factors. The task is now seen as not simply identifying genes that make people susceptible to certain problems but as studying the environmental risk factors that are involved and the interplay between genes and the environment (Rutter 2007b, 2007c). This work is in its very early stages, and there are as yet few results from it that have clear implications for education.
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But this area of scientific activity has been transformed in recent years, and it can be expected to offer new insights that will inform teaching in the future, for example in the development of more sophisticated strategies for prevention and early intervention.
Neuroscience and special educational needs There has also been dramatic progress in recent years in scientists’ understanding of how the brain works both during the process of learning and when there are obstacles to that process. This progress has been based partly on technical advances in methods of investigation (see Table 5.5). But significant progress is only possible when the application of novel technical expertise is accompanied by conceptual advances. The developing brain is constantly changing so that any apparent ‘abnormality’ needs to evaluated against an accurate developmental match. The behaviours and competencies that are observed at what Morton and
Table 5.5
Applications of recent advances in techniques of brain imaging
Technique
Focus of attention
Example of its application to SEN research
Structural magnetic resonance imaging (SMRI)
Brain structure
Part of the temporal lobe was enlarged in adults with cleft lip and palate who had had no history of hearing impairment in childhood (Shriver et al.).
Diffusion tension imaging (DTI)
Brain structure
Reduced connectivity between the brain hemispheres was shown in boys with Tourette’s syndrome (Plessen et al.).
Functional MRI
Brain function
Young people’s neural response to rewards differed between those with a major depressive disorder and controls (Forbes et al.).
Event-related potentials (ERP)
Brain function
Children diagnosed with anxiety disorders showed different maturational patterns from controls in cortical circuitry that is involved in monitoring responses to a stimulus (Ladouceur et al.).
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS)
Brain chemistry
Men with a history of dyslexia in childhood showed both metabolic and morphological changes in the cerebellum compared to controls (Rae et al. 2002).
Note: This table draws on information on brain imaging techniques that was presented by Pine (2006) in the introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry on neuroimaging. See his article for a fuller account of each technique. The undated examples in the table of applications of these techniques are all taken from papers in the same special issue of the journal.
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Principles and concepts Frith called the behavioural level may not be caused in a straightforward manner. The picture may be more complex with interactive causative factors operating. C.D. Frith (2006: 979) gave an example of this from autism: if people with autism have an abnormal brain module for recognizing faces, ‘this might not be a cause of difficulties in processing faces, but a consequence of a failure in the programme that normally causes infants to seek out faces as a source of stimulation’. He suggests that there are at least three kinds of brain abnormalities associated with developmental disorders:
•
primary abnormalities that are the primary cause of the abnormal developmental trajectory;
•
secondary abnormalities that are the consequence of the abnormal experiences created by the primary abnormality;
•
tertiary abnormalities that are the consequence of compensatory processes designed to overcome the cognitive problems created by the first two kinds of abnormality.
When rapid scientific advances in a complex field appear to have implications for important aspects of people’s lives, there is a ready market in the media and the public mind for what, in this field, have been called ‘neuromyths’. The general world of education and pedagogy has provided fertile ground for the growth of such myths, which academic neuroscientists have viewed with alarm. They fear not only that the public and professionals will be misled into particular activities that offer no benefit, but also that the potential value of their science will eventually be undermined in the eyes of the world.
•
Children are either ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ learners and should be taught accordingly. If their left brain dominates their approach to learning, teachers should emphasize language, logical argument, analysis and the acquisition of factual information. If, however, they are stronger in their right brain, teachers should place greater reliance on forms and patterns, spatial representation of ideas, rhythm, images and pictures.
•
Children differ in learning styles, with many learning almost exclusively through either visual or auditory or kinaesthetic modalities. Teachers should test all their pupils to identify their learning styles and then teach to their strengths.
•
A simple series of body movements (as prescribed, for example, in ‘brain gym’) will ‘integrate all areas of the brain to enhance learning’. There should be regular intervals of brain gym in every lesson.
Figure 5.6 education
Examples of ‘neuromyths’ sold to teachers in the general field of
Goswami (2006), who gave the examples of neuromyths in Figure 5.6 that have been pressed upon teachers, argued that educational prescriptions of this general kind over-extend the application of findings from neuroscience and sometimes misrepresent those findings, but, in spite of that, she believed neuroscience has a great deal of potential for providing guidance to teachers in the future (see
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also Teaching and Learning Research Programme 2005; Blakemore and Frith 2005). If that is the position in relation to general pedagogy, what can educators learn from neuroscience about the development of special educational needs? You will find discussions relating to this question in some later chapters, for example on dyslexia in Chapter 13 and on dyscalculia in Chapter 14. As in the case of genetics, the neuroscience of learning difficulties is at an early stage of development and there are few established findings with clear practical implications at this point. However, there is a great deal of activity, and it can be expected that our understanding of the neurological basis of severe difficulties such as autism and ADHD will advance significantly over the next few years. The implications for practice may not involve a simple translation of laboratory findings into prescriptions for pedagogy, however, but rather an indirect analysis of teaching or prevention strategies that might be more successful. For example, one hypothesis about developmental dyscalculia highlights the possibility of damage to the parietal area of the brain. If evidence is found to support that idea, brain imaging studies of young children with early behavioural symptoms of possible number difficulties could identify those who might benefit from a specific teaching programme focused on the problems associated with dyscalculia (Goswami 2006: 4; Blakemore and Frith 2005: 65–6). Caution is required in this field too. It is understandable that, where children face severe impairments and exceptional challenges in their development, parents and professionals will be attracted to any strategy that appears to offer the prospect of a substantial amelioration in the symptoms or even a ‘cure’. Many such strategies have been developed with a neuropsychological explanation of their design but little or no systematic evidence to support their claims. The Son-Rise Program for autism (sometimes known in the UK as the Option Method) is one example. This home-based programme is intended to develop an optimal physical learning environment for children with autism. (For details of the approach see the programme originators’ website, http://www.autismtreatmentcenter.org). The evaluation of long-lasting, home-based interventions of this kind is very difficult. For example, many families may implement the programme in ways that differ from what is typically described in the literature (Williams 2006), and there are other technical problems (Charman and Howlin 2003). Evaluation studies themselves can become the focus of controversy as researchers contest the validity of different strategies for testing the effectiveness of an intervention. The controversy is likely to be exacerbated if the proponents of an approach are seen to be publicizing positive results in the mass media. See, for example, a critique by Rack et al. (2007) of an evaluation report on the DDAT programme, an exercise-based programme for dyslexia that is also known by the name of the businessman who developed it, Wynford Dore. The same issue of the journal includes a response from the original report’s authors. Neuroscience promises new levels of insight into fundamental aspects of the development of children who have SEN. But developing a critical understanding of those insights is only the beginning of the task for those who work with the children and their families. The goal of turning them into practicable and effective forms of intervention and teaching will require a different kind of expertise. That is the subject of the next two sections of this book.
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Conclusions The meticulous analysis of environmental factors which characterized much research in the latter part of the twentieth century is now being complemented by increased understanding of genetic factors and improved techniques in neuroscience. Today biological influences can be analysed in much more detail, while the relevance of environmental factors and of protective factors (or resilience) is more fully understood too. A full analysis of the development of children who have SEN will need to take account of the whole range of possible factors that might play a part. It will have to give attention to the timing of significant events in a child’s life and the interaction between them. It will also examine how biology, cognition, behaviour and the environment interact to produce the observed outcome. In the rest of this book we will return to these themes constantly as we examine different types of SEN and consider issues of education and management.
PART TWO Assessment in context
6 Identification and assessment
Objectives When you have studied this chapter you should be able to:
• • •
understand key principles and concepts that are used in discussing the identification and assessment of SEN; explain key requirements which all approaches to identification and assessment should meet, and analyse the extent to which any particular approach meets those requirements; critically examine the broad advantages and disadvantages of the most common approaches to identification and assessment.
Contents Identification and assessment of SEN in the early years Identification and assessment of SEN at school Initial assessment questions Tests for testers – what standards must assessment meet? Assessment and the delivery of the curriculum Approaches to the assessment of SEN
• • • •
Focus on the learner Focus on the teaching programme Focus on the ‘zone of potential development’ Focus on the learning environment
Conclusions
Identification and assessment of SEN in the early years In Chapter 3 you were invited to compare different ways of thinking about SEN. It will be obvious that, if professionals conceive of SEN as a permanent individual characteristic of a child, they will approach the tasks of identifying and assessing those needs differently than if they had an interactional model of SEN. In this chapter we will consider various approaches to identification and assessment that relate to how SEN are conceived, and we will examine the practical implications of tackling the task in different ways.
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Assessment in context It is conventional wisdom that SEN and possible educational disadvantage should be identified as early as possible. The UK government has described early intervention as the ‘cornerstone’ of the Every Child Matters strategy, offering lasting benefits and ‘providing a sound foundation for future learning and development’. It ‘enables some children to catch up with their classmates and for those who need support on a continuing basis it means that help is available as early as possible, reducing the risk of long-term underachievement and disaffection’ (DfES 2004c: 9) Similar principles have been adopted in other European countries (Soriano 2005) and in the USA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 1997). On the face of it the logic is obvious. Children who are not given extra help at an early stage will fall behind their classmates at school and will then not be able to follow what is taught. They will be aware of the gap between what they can do and what their peers can do, and as a result may come to see themselves as incapable of school learning. Their motivation for classroom tasks will be undermined, their concentration will falter, and this will feed a negative cycle in which failure leads to further failure. Clearly, early identification of potential difficulties could help parents and teachers to halt this process before it starts. With a traditional ‘wait-to-fail’ model for service delivery, students have to experience failure or distress or have to reach a critical juncture in their schooling or development before help is offered to them. If those who are at risk are identified early, it is possible (in theory) to provide ‘evidence-based prevention and early intervention services delivered through a multi-tiered intervention approach’ (Albers et al. 2007: 114). However, the situation is more complex than that scenario makes it appear. With any system of screening or early identification it is inevitable that mistakes will be made. When children are young, their behaviour and performance are more variable than when they are older; they may underperform because of minor differences between the way a task is presented and the way they are accustomed to it at home; they may not be prepared by their early experiences for the activities that are used to assess them; children who are very familiar with the assessment materials may do relatively well initially because of prior practice. As a result, children may be wrongly identified as having serious difficulties when this is not the case (‘false positives’), or they may not be identified as having difficulties when they really do (‘false negatives’). The aim must be to maximize the number of ‘true positives’ and ‘true negatives’ – a task that is more challenging when the children involved are younger. Table 6.1 sets out some of the considerations that might be applied when evaluating a screening instrument with these concerns in mind. Glover and Albers (2007), who produced a fuller version of this table, emphasize that there should be an evidence base for making each decision. In the UK until recently great reliance was placed at the preschool stage on surveillance by professionals in the health and other services. Before school entry this was seen as the most efficient and cost-effective approach available. Strategies included:
• • •
health screening before and after birth and in infancy; monitoring by the health visitor service; use of developmental checklists in nurseries, playgroups and other preschool provision;
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Table 6.1 Some considerations and sample questions for evaluating universal screening assessments Appropriateness for the intended use Compatibility with the service Are the timing and frequency of administration delivery needs appropriate? Are the identification outcomes relevant? Alignment with constructs of Are the measured constructs relevant for interest determining an individual’s risk status? Population fit Is the assessment contextually and developmentally appropriate? Technical adequacy Adequacy of norms Test–retest and inter-scorer reliability Predictive validity Sensitivity Specificity Positive predictive value Negative predictive value Hit rate
Is the normative sample representative, recent, and sufficiently large? Is measurement consistent over time and across scorers? Of those actually at risk, what proportion is correctly identified? Of those actually not at risk, what proportion is correctly identified? Of those identified as at risk, what proportion is correctly identified? Of those identified as not at risk, what proportion is correctly identified? What proportion of the total sample is correctly identified?
Concurrent validity
Is the assessment outcome consistent with a criterion measure?
Construct validity
Does the assessment measure the construct for which it is designed?
Content validity
Are the assessment format and items appropriate?
Usability Balance of costs and benefits
Feasibility of administration Acceptability Infrastructure requirements Utility of outcomes
Are the costs associated with the assessment reasonable and commensurate with the benefits that will be obtained? Are personnel able to administer the assessment? Do stakeholders appreciate the benefits associated with the assessment? Are resources available to collect, manage, and interpret assessment data? Can stakeholders understand the implications associated with assessment outcomes? Are the outcomes useful for guiding instruction?
Source: Adapted from Glover and Albers (2007).
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•
priority admission of children at risk into ‘opportunity playgroups’ and similar facilities where additional support is available.
The problem with such a patchwork of arrangements is that it is not difficult for children to fall through the net (e.g. if their family moves a great deal or does not make use of the services available because of fear or unfamiliarity). There is evidence from the USA as well as the UK that factors that lead to underuse of the relevant services are more likely to affect families from ethnic and linguistic minority communities (Shah 1992; Zhang and Bennett 2003; Denney et al. 2007). Efforts have been made to ensure that services are offered more consistently, are coordinated more effectively and are accessible to the most vulnerable families. In relation to SEN, a statutory requirement was placed on health authorities and NHS Trusts some years ago that they inform parents and the appropriate local education authority when they form the opinion that a child under the age of five may have special educational needs. They must also inform the parents if they believe that a particular voluntary organisation is likely to be able to give the parents advice or assistance in connection with any special educational needs that the child may have. (Education Act 1996, section 332) Subsequently a National Service Framework was put in place to ensure that, among other things, children and young people who are disabled or who have complex health needs, receive coordinated, high quality child and family-centred services which are based on assessed needs, which promote social inclusion and, where possible, enable them and their families to live ordinary lives. This requires that services provide early identification of health conditions, impairments and any social and physical barriers to inclusion, through integrated diagnosis and assessment processes. (Department of Health 2004: Standard 8) It is no accident that there was an emphasis on communication and coordination between agencies. The fragmentation of provision for children in their early years has been seen as a major weakness over an extended period (Pugh 1988), even though the statutory, private and voluntary agencies that are involved offer a rich variety of facilities to meet the complex needs of parents and children. They include maintained nursery schools, nursery classes in primary schools, independent schools, day nurseries, family centres, preschool centres, playgroups, childminders, and, for children with SEN, a variety of parent support schemes. This increasingly integrated patchwork now has an additional stimulus to coordination in the form of the government’s Early Support Programme, a major initiative to provide training and resources that will foster ‘better coordinated, family-focused services for young disabled children’ (http://www.early support.org.uk). A new post of Area Special Needs Coordinator for early years settings was established to foster good practice and effective inclusion (DfES 2002b). Detailed guidance was issued for professionals involved with the
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planning and delivery of services to young disabled children and their families with the emblematic title Together from the Start (DfES/DH 2003). The notion of a ‘team around the child’ has evolved, with the parents being full members of the team (Limbrick 2005). Research sponsored by the DfES that was completed at around the same time as those initiatives were launched showed that attending preschool provision benefits the cognitive development of children who are identified as being ‘at risk’ (Sylva et al. 2004). They also found that those centres which were within the maintained sector were more likely to have systems in place for identifying children who had SEN. Far fewer private day nurseries and fewer still play groups reported having such systems. They argued that ‘this suggests that some children “at risk” of developing special educational needs may go unnoticed and miss the opportunity for early intervention in these forms of provision’ (Taggart et al. 2006: 43). This is not entirely surprising, since those early education providers which accept any form of government funding are required to have regard to the SEN Code of Practice and to have a written SEN policy. They are expected to monitor individual children’s progress and to make a graduated response to any difficulties that arise (DfES 2001b: Section 4). One aim of the recent initiatives has been to spread best practice in this regard throughout the sector. A distinction can be made between lifelong difficulties with physical manifestations that are typically identified before school entry and school-related difficulties that are typically identified at a later stage by teachers. Concepts such as ‘hearing impairment’ appear comparatively straightforward – a matter of medical diagnosis from the point when the impairment is established (which may be at birth or following a severe illness such as meningitis during childhood). On the other hand, the position is seen to be different when we consider those forms of SEN that are defined in terms of problems in school, so that they are identified later. Sociologists such as Tomlinson (1982) have pointed out that those categories of SEN which are seen as ‘subjective’ may be more prone to distortion than those sometimes described as ‘objective’. (In fact, even apparently straightforward forms of SEN cannot be understood adequately through focusing on obvious impairments and their amelioration. See the discussion of a social/cultural perspective on deafness in Chapter 17.) There may still be a problem if a child is correctly identified as having significant difficulties but an important aspect of those difficulties is overlooked. Consider the example of Steven who was identified at the age of 3 as having made a slow start in talking. He lived with his mother and two siblings in a run-down cottage in an isolated rural area. The family rarely left the immediate vicinity of their home, and the older children had poor attendance records at school. Steven’s problem was noted by an education welfare officer when he visited the home to follow up an attendance issue with the children’s mother. He advised her to ‘take the lad to your GP for a check-up’. But she could not afford the expense of having to make frequent bus trips to the local town. In addition, she was scared of getting involved in anything that might further overwhelm the family, especially if it required her to keep all three of her children under control in the presence of others. Steven had an intermittent hearing problem (glue ear) in a serious form, and it was not finally identified and treated until he started school two years later. So there can be errors in early identification, and the consequences for some children are likely to be negative. What will make errors less likely or their impact
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Assessment in context less serious? Here are three suggestions that have received wide support and are important well beyond the identification stage. You will find that we come back to them again and again throughout this book:
•
Parents must be fully involved throughout. Full involvement of parents from the outset will add a crucial dimension to the picture. The intimate knowledge that parents bring is enhanced by their emotional commitment to their child. Of course, if you stand very close to something, you do not always see it in the round. But you will still see things about it that nobody else notices.
•
Everyone who knows the child must collaborate. Errors will be minimized where there is close cooperation and communication between any health and social services professionals who know a child and the teachers who have responsibility for him or her in school. If views from different perspectives are sought, listened to and reconciled, it is less likely that the child’s difficulties will be misunderstood because of one person’s (or one profession’s) blind spots.
•
Intervention should have a low profile. Low-profile helping strategies will build on the normal school routine of the child’s class group and interrupt and disrupt them as little as possible. The effect will also be to reduce any potentially stigmatizing effect of labelling to a minimum.
During the Foundation Stage of education for children aged 3–5 years, progress towards the targeted Early Learning Goals (QCA 2000b) should be monitored closely. It is pointed out in the Code that this will benefit a wider group of children and not only those with SEN: children making slower progress may include those who are younger, who are learning EAL or who have particular learning difficulties. It should not be assumed that children who are making slower progress must, therefore, have SEN. But such children will need carefully differentiated learning opportunities to help them progress, and careful monitoring of their progress (DfES 2001a: paras 4.5–4.8).
Identification and assessment of SEN at school Schools in England and Wales had statutory baseline assessment arrangements between 1998 and 2002. This involved assessing each child when they started the reception stage at school using an accredited baseline assessment scheme. Many alternative schemes were available. This framework has been replaced by the Foundation Stage Profile, a national assessment scheme that helps teachers to sum up each child’s progress and learning needs. For most children, the Profile is completed at the end of the Reception year in primary school. It is based on ongoing observations and assessments carried out during the final year of the Foundation Stage, as well as contributions from parents and from practitioners in settings that children have attended previously. They are required to cover the six areas of learning associated with the Foundation Stage:
• •
personal, social and emotional development; communication, language and literacy;
Identification and assessment
Activity 6.1
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Dilemmas in the identification of SEN
Read the following three pairs of dilemma statements from Norwich (2008: 63) and consider the following questions: 1
To what extent does each pair of statements constitute a dilemma for you?
2
In the research study four broad response alternatives were identified. Which of these best characterizes your response to each dilemma: (a) Tension – A hard choice is recognized and experienced but a decision is not reached (b) Resolved tension – A hard choice is recognized and experienced but some balancing is carried out and a choice is made (c) The validity of the dilemma is questioned by questioning the link between the option and the negative outcome. This may have the effect of moderating the dilemma. (d) Other outcomes, whether more negative or positive, are presented for each option. This may have the effect of restructuring the dilemma. Identification:
•
If children experiencing difficulties in learning are identified and labelled as having a disability (needing special education), then they are likely to be treated as different, devalued and stigmatised.
•
If children experiencing difficulties in learning are NOT identified as having a disability (needing special education), then it is less likely additional educational resources will be identified and ensured for them.
Curriculum:
•
If children identified as having a disability (needing special education) are offered the same learning experiences as other children, they are likely to be denied the opportunity to have learning experiences relevant to their individual needs.
•
If children identified as having a disability (needing special education) are NOT offered the same learning experiences as other children, then they are likely to be treated as a separate lower status group and be denied equal opportunities.
Location:
•
If children with moderate and severe disabilities (needing special education) are taught in general classrooms, then they are less likely to have access to scarce and specialist services and facilities.
•
If children with moderate and severe disabilities (needing special education) are NOT taught in general classrooms, then they are more likely to feel excluded and not be accepted by other children.
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• • • •
mathematical development; knowledge and understanding of the world; physical development; creative development.
During the consultations that led to the replacement of the previous scheme there was strong support for the inclusion of all children in the new scheme, including those who might have SEN, but there was also a strong view that ‘the end of the foundation stage was too late to identify children’s special educational or other needs’. The majority ‘thought that the new assessment could best serve children with special educational needs by acting as a support or trigger to other specialist assessments’ (SMSR 2001: 4). The views expressed during that consultation were in line with a key requirement that was set out in the Code of Practice in the same year – that there should be graduated response so that the action taken to support a child at risk is no more than what is required to resolve the child’s needs. Only where progress continues to cause concern should additional action be taken. This approach recognises that there is a continuum of special educational needs and, where necessary, brings increasing specialist expertise to bear on the difficulties that a child may be experiencing. However the school should, other than in exceptional cases, make full use of all available classroom and school resources before expecting to call upon outside resources . . . In many cases the action taken will mean that the child’s needs are resolved. Only for those children whose progress continues to cause concern should additional action be taken. For children in the primary phase this Code recommends that when a child is identified as having special educational needs the school should intervene as described below at School Action and School Action Plus. These interventions will not usually be steps on the way to statutory assessment. Nor are they hurdles to be crossed before a statutory assessment can be made. Some children will require less rather than more help if the interventions work successfully. The interventions are a means of matching special educational provision to the child’s needs, and are therefore part of the continuous and systematic cycle of planning, action and review within the school to enable all children to learn and progress. (DfES 2001a: paras 5.20–5.22) The School Action and School Action Plus provisions that operate in England and Wales were outlined in Chapter 3. Similar graduated approaches to determining a child’s level of need in the light of their response to basic adjustments to teaching have been widely adopted internationally. In the USA this is known as the Response to Intervention (RTI) model (Vaughn and Fuchs 2003). Rigorous evaluation studies of the approach have indicated that it can lead to fewer full individual assessments being conducted and those pupils who are assessed being more likely to prove to qualify for additional special education services. It can adapt to the requirements of diverse groups, including children who are learning EAL (Haager 2007). It is not only less stressful for children and parents but also more cost-effective. VanDerHeyden et al. (2007), who reported one of the evaluation studies, argued that there is one critical condition for those outcomes:
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the interventions to which a response is evaluated must be an established, evidence-based intervention that is implemented in the way in which it was planned to be intended. Assessment of progress involves a detailed evaluation of the intervention as well as an assessment of the child’s performance (Barnett et al. 2004). RTI may be cost-effective, but its scope is ambitious and it makes considerable demands in terms of staff training and support. If the interventions arranged through School Action Plus prove inadequate to meet a child’s needs, the local authority is required to arrange a statutory assessment and, depending on the outcome of that assessment, to draw up a statement of SEN so that it can arrange provision that the school could not reasonably be expected to make within its own resources. In January 2006 some 236,700 (or 2.9 per cent of) pupils across all schools in England had statements of SEN (DfES 2006d). This number has been decreasing over recent years, but the graduated system of assessment that determines it has come under increasing criticism from parents (Audit Commission 2002b; House of Commons Education and Skills Committee 2006) and teachers (Brettingham 2007). Ofsted (2002b) questioned what SEN statements are for. Because the LEA has a duty to ensure that the provision specified in the statement is made, and the LEA must make available the resources needed to defray the cost of the provision, it follows, therefore, that the statement may be seen, not as an educational assessment and a prescription, but as a key to unlocking resources. Where this occurs, the effects on the LEA may be considerable. The budgetary implications are self-evident, but the impact may be broader, in that a culture may be created in which the main focus of SEN-related activity is the production of statements, not the alignment of resources to needs. The statement becomes an end in itself and not the means to an end, which is to improve the standards achieved by the pupils concerned and to extend the range of opportunities open to them. Such a development is likely to be productive only of bureaucracy and litigation. This is not a climate conducive to ‘inclusion’. (Ofsted 2002b: para. 18) As we noted in Chapter 3, schools have not, in general, made use of the detailed assessment information attached to statements in order to plan the children’s teaching or set IEP targets, and IEPs are not generally seen as useful in supporting effective practice, particularly at secondary level (Tennant, 2007). The fact that local authorities have specific responsibilities towards children with statements may limit their scope for investing in wider preventive work with children with lower levels of need, at School Action and School Action Plus. The Audit Commission, which made this point in 2002, noted that over the previous three years, authorities in England and Wales had increased their spending on children with statements almost ten times as much as they had increased spending on children with SEN but without a statement. They quoted LEA officers as speaking of ‘a “catch-22” situation in this respect: their obligations towards children with statements meant that they were unable to spend more on children at School Action and School Action Plus; but until they did, demand for statements could be expected to continue to rise’ (Audit Commission 2002a: para. 38) It has subsequently been argued by the House of Commons Education and Skills Committee (2006) and others that local authorities have an inbuilt conflict of
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Assessment in context interest because they are responsible both for assessing the needs of the child and for arranging provision to meet those needs. The government’s aim is to reduce reliance on statements by improving the skills and capacity of schools to meet a diverse range of needs. Increasing numbers of local authorities have been delegating SEN funding to schools, reducing the number of statements at the same time. The House of Commons Committee argued that, while this is a positive trend, delegated arrangements ‘must be set in a system with much greater clarification and much stronger guidance on minimum standards of provision’. They argued that in the absence of such a system the guidance on reducing reliance on statements had led to inequitable provision and a ‘postcode lottery’. They found that the proportion of pupils with statements varied substantially between authorities, for example between Nottinghamshire where 1.08 per cent of all pupils had statements in 2002 and Halton in Cheshire where the figure was 4.83 per cent. There are thus considerable pressures for changes in the framework for the formal assessment of SEN, but reform has been delayed because there is no consensus about what should replace the current arrangements. In England the debate has focused on a small number of key issues:
•
How should the assessment of SEN relate to the ‘personalization of learning’ for all children? In principle, there could be a continuum of levels of support across the system, including high levels that would be suitable for a child with complex or severe SEN. The Scottish education system has adopted a model of ‘additional support needs’ that does not separate out ‘special educational needs’ as a distinct categorical entity (Scottish Executive Education Department 2003; Gibson 2005; Hamill and Clark 2005).
•
How should approaches to the assessment of SEN build on the data available through the Common Assessment Framework in such a way that explicit reference is made to the five outcomes associated with the Every Child Matters initiative?
•
To what degree should those who are centrally involved in the assessment process be independent of the bodies that have financial responsibility for SEN provision? The House of Commons Education and Skills Committee (2007b) argued for full independence, while bodies such as the broad-based Special Educational Consortium have argued that it is important for SEN assessment, like other assessment in schools, to be closely integrated into the fabric of teaching and learning.
Initial assessment questions The formal arrangements for identification and assessment provide a framework within which the ‘real work’ of trying to understand a child’s strengths and difficulties proceeds. We now move on to examine that work. When a child has been identified as being at risk or as experiencing difficulties, it is necessary to carry out a more detailed assessment. Harlen (1983) has suggested some initial questions that need to be considered when embarking on any assessment in school, whatever the focus. We have added a commentary below to highlight issues that arise in relation to work with different groups of pupils.
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What is the purpose of the assessment? For example, checking what has been learned; making comparisons; reporting achievements; diagnosing difficulties; evaluating teaching or the curriculum; monitoring at school, LEA or national level. What information is required for that purpose? For example, what learning outcomes are to be assessed – knowledge, techniques, problem-solving strategies, creativity, confidence, ability to work autonomously, ability to work with others on solving problems and carrying out tasks? (In the case of children with EAL, it may be important to assess their knowledge of the vocabulary for the subject.) What methods will provide this information? Any assessment method will have the following components:
•
Ways in which the tasks are presented. For example, on paper; by demonstration; in a practical situation; through normal class work. (In the case of pupils with EAL, the use of methods that place a premium on language proficiency may mean that they fail to understand the question or task properly, so that their knowledge of the target subject is not assessed at all.)
•
Ways in which pupils can respond. For example, selection of correct answer from multiple choices; writing; drawing, etc.; constructing; speaking. Note that pupils may differ in their success in responding through different media. For example, there is evidence that boys do better on a test in a multiplechoice format, while girls do better when their knowledge is assessed through an essay-writing task (Gipps and Murphy 1994).
•
Standards or criteria used in judging the response. For example, comparing with others’ performance; comparing with stated performance criteria; comparing with pupil’s own previous performance.
•
Ways of presenting the results of assessment. For example, number of correct answers; grade; qualitative comments.
Together these factors combine to determine whether a method of assessment is reliable (consistent, yielding the same results whoever administers it and whenever it is given), and valid (accurate, giving results that reflect the reality of the child’s abilities or achievements). Specifically, we may want to know whether the assessment has concurrent validity and/or predictive validity (see Table 6.1). It will always be important that a test or assessment is reliable. For different purposes either concurrent or predictive validity may be more important. How will the results be interpreted and used? While the purposes of assessment will not differ for different groups of children in the same situation, the interpretation of the results may be less certain and more sensitive. For example, if children from a minority ethnic group obtain a low score on average on an attainment test, this may be taken to mean that, as a group, their abilities are lower, or it may be taken to mean that the curriculum is ethnocentric or the test biased. For pupils with EAL concurrent validity could be high if decisions made about the purpose, information and methods of assessment take account of their needs. But predictive validity could still be low. If the interpretation of their results takes account of their (possibly unusual) educational history, predictions about their future progress should be more accurate.
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Assessment in context
Tests for testers – what standards must assessment meet? This section will highlight four reasonable expectations of the process of assessment: theoretical integrity; practical efficacy; equity; and accountability (Cline, 1992). The first two of these have regularly featured in accounts of SEN assessment. We will emphasize the equal importance of the last two. As different approaches to assessment are introduced in this book, we will examine them in the light of the questions presented in Figure 6.1 Theoretical integrity
•
Is the approach to assessment based on an acceptable model of SEN (or is the model on which it is based reliant on outdated or misleading categories of handicap)?
•
Does its implicit model of human development incorporate all aspects of development (or is it based on a narrow view of what is important in development – for example, focusing on intelligence to the exclusion of everything else)?
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Is it based on an acceptable model of the learning process that respects the autonomy and initiative of the learner (or does it appear to assume a topdown, highly structured process for all aspects of classroom learning)?
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Does it explicitly focus on aspects of development that are important for successful learning (or does it emphasize only weaknesses, limitations, gaps in knowledge and what might make for failure)?
Practical efficacy
•
Does the assessment draw upon the richest sources of information available (or is it based on thin evidence that comes from a restricted perspective on what the child is like)?
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Does it produce information that can lead directly to improvements in teaching and learning (or is the information it yields of limited value in planning how the child can best be taught)?
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Does the way the assessment is conducted empower children, parents and teachers (or does it place them in a subordinate position so that their observations as stakeholders in the situation are ignored)?
Equity
• •
Are the rights of children and parents effectively protected? Does the process operate without bias with respect to gender, social class, ethnicity, language use and religion (see Chapter 6)?
Accountability
•
Is the process and the information it produces open and intelligible to children, parents, teachers, other professionals and educational administrators?
• •
Are the agreed purposes of the assessment satisfied? Is the process cost-effective?
Figure 6.1
Questions to be asked about the process of assessment
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From time to time professional groups involved in SEN assessment have tried to define a set of principles to guide their assessment practice. The following statement was produced by a team of educational psychologists in the London Borough of Southwark (Shah et al. 1997): Assessment carried out in the Southwark Educational Psychology Service will be underpinned by the following principles: Psychological
The assessment will be informed by the testing of hypotheses which derive from current psychological theory. Understandable The assessment will have a number of audiences. It must be understandable by those audiences and have value for all those audiences. Beneficial The assessment must make a difference, and that difference must be a beneficial one, both in terms of the process and in terms of the outcomes. Equity The assessment process must promote equity and address the issues of disadvantage and deprivation. Parents The assessment should in the majority of cases take place only with the full agreement and involvement of the parents/ carers of the child or young person. Contextual The assessment must be rooted firmly in a real life context and explore concerns in the context in which they occur. The assessment should acknowledge the maturational, developmental and pedagogical processes that children and young people undergo and take account of those processes. Accurate The assessment should be based on fact, and opinion and interpretation presented in the report should be denoted as such. Reproducible Another psychologist working with the same hypotheses should be able to reach similar conclusions provided no change has taken place. Activity 6.2
Defining principles of assessment for your own setting
Consider the principles of assessment agreed by the Southwark Educational Psychology Service in 1997. These were clearly based on the challenge of assessment as it was experienced by a group of people doing a particular job at a particular time in a particular kind of setting. Do all the principles they described apply to the context in which you work? How would you adapt their statement for your situation?
Assessment and the delivery of the curriculum When teachers assess SEN they work within the context of the assessment procedures their school has in place for all children. In England there is a national system of assessment at the end of each Key Stage – that is, at ages 7, 11, 14 and 16. The results are published school by school, and these arrangements are seen as playing a central role in improving educational standards. Since everyone
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Assessment in context is able to examine the public ‘league tables’ of schools’ results, there is a strong motivation for schools to present the best possible picture of their achievements. These requirements reflect an international trend towards more systematic assessment of pupils’ attainments in school and public dissemination of the results (Rouse and McLaughlin 2007). The strategies of assessment employed to meet national requirements at the end of each Key Stage have been designed to enable broad-brush information to be obtained across the age group. They are not usually helpful in relation to detailed programme planning for children with SEN. However, while it was statutorily possible to exempt some children with statements, teachers considered from the outset that it was important that all children should be included in the process wherever possible. They argued that this would support their inclusion in the delivery of the mainstream curriculum (Lewis 1995). Special arrangements may be made in order to enable children with SEN to participate. For example, they may be allowed additional time during the test session; material may be presented on audiotape or in Braille or enlarged print; they may use any mechanical and technological aids that they would normally use; and an amanuensis or a reader may be employed. It is important to ensure that the operation of the assessment procedures is as equitable as possible. But this is not the only challenging issue that is presented by the national assessment regime in relation to children with SEN. It is equally important that those who are aware that they have underperformed on the assessments are not discouraged from future effort or made to feel that what they can achieve is of no worth. The ultimate aim of all assessment in the classroom must be to enable teachers to match their delivery of the curriculum to the needs of each pupil (a process of differentiation). In a contemporary classroom that goal must be placed alongside the goal of ensuring that learning experiences are shared across a whole class group as much as possible (a process of inclusion). The difficulty of achieving this may be illustrated by examining tensions within some of the guidance that has been given on ‘including all children’ in England’s Primary National Strategy: For children working significantly below the level of their class or group, learning objectives related to the aspect on which the whole class is working should be chosen as much as possible. However, they should be right for each child at each stage of their learning and development. If, with appropriate access strategies and support, a child cannot work towards the same learning objective as the rest of the class, teachers may want to track back to an earlier objective . . . Planning for individual children or groups of children based on informed observation and assessment for learning will be informed by knowledge of their priorities. For the majority of the time it will be appropriate for children to work on objectives that are similar and related to those for the whole class. However, at other times you will also have to consider whether the children have other priority needs that are central to their learning, for example a need to concentrate on some key skills. (DfES 2006c: 14) There is a significant difference between ‘tracking back to an earlier objective’ (i.e. aiming to develop the pupil’s knowledge and skills using the same route as for others but travelling more slowly) and responding to ‘a need to concentrate on
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some key skills’ (where the destination or route may be quite different – for example, when mobility skills are taught to children with visual needs; see Chapter 17). While responsive pedagogy may be widely seen as good practice, it does not appear to be achieved consistently (see, for example, Simpson 1997). Recent school inspections in England have indicated that, while there is wider acceptance of the principle of inclusion, classroom practice in mainstream schools continues to show shortcomings in ‘a high proportion of lessons’ (Ofsted 2004). A combination of assessment strategies is likely to be most productive in facilitating effective teaching for children with learning difficulties and disabilities. A review by Davis and Florian (2004: 32–3) suggested that we should focus on strategies which:
•
are designed to directly raise attainment (e.g. using task analysis and target setting, with associated guidance, prompts and other supports to reach specified objectives and demonstrate success);
•
promote ‘active learning’ (e.g. through self-assessment and response partner systems);
•
promote participation and engagement (e.g. through highlighting settings such as collaborative learning and ‘real-life’ problem solving as contexts for assessment);
•
identify and respond to personalized learning styles and preferences (e.g. visual/auditory/kinaesthetic modes of learning or orientation to study (such as deep/surface approaches).
In later chapters we will discuss strategies of assessment for intervention that are intended to facilitate the three key tasks underpinning successful differentiation within an inclusive classroom:
• • •
setting suitable learning challenges; responding to pupils’ diverse needs; overcoming potential barriers to learning.
Approaches to the assessment of SEN In this final section of the chapter we will describe four distinctive approaches to assessment that have been or are likely to become influential in the field of SEN. They vary markedly in their value in enabling teachers to plan for differentiation. A framework for locating these approaches in relation to the learner is presented in Figure 6.2. The aims and methods associated with each approach are summarized briefly here. You may read more about them in later chapters where each is featured and explained in detail. For the present what matters is to identify the major emphasis of each approach. Focus on the learner Traditionally the assessment of SEN has involved a detailed examination of children with difficulties. The assumption was made that the source of any
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Assessment in context
Figure 6.2
Locating approaches to assessment in relation to the learner
Source: Adapted from a figure developed by Sandra Dunsmuir and Jessica Dewey of the University College London Educational Psychology Group.
problems would lie within the children: they must suffer from a disability or impairment of learning ability compared to most children of their age. The assessment task was thought of as similar to medical diagnosis. The aim of assessment was to determine what category of disability the children suffered from. Their performance was compared to norms for their age group. There were a series of assumptions behind this approach. It was assumed that:
• •
individuals’ traits and abilities are relatively permanent characteristics;
•
this pattern of strengths and weaknesses is the prime cause of the child’s poor classroom performance, with other factors having less importance;
•
a teaching programme which remediates weaknesses and builds on strengths can lead to improvement in performance.
they show a pattern of strengths and weaknesses in learning resulting from these characteristics which can be identified through educational assessment;
This approach has been particularly associated with arranging provision for children with SEN in separate schools or units. (Approaches to assessment within this paradigm will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 12.) Focus on the teaching programme Over the last 40 years assumptions relating to a focus on the learner have frequently been attacked, and other approaches have been explored. To some extent the new approaches have been associated with the parallel movement in the direction of inclusive education in mainstream schools. The first new approach to
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attract attention on a large scale as an alternative to the focus on the learner was a focus on the teaching programme. The underlying assumption here is that the curriculum presented in the classroom is not well suited to the current learning needs of the child. It is necessary to match work on the curriculum more closely to the child’s existing skills and knowledge. The educators’ task is conceived within a framework of classical learning theory. The immediate challenge is to analyse learning tasks within the curriculum into a hierarchy of component skill elements. Because these elements are thought to be organized hierarchically, it is assumed that they will best be approached in incremental steps. It is possible to determine which elements the child has mastered and which require further work. For children with SEN the incremental steps can be made smaller or otherwise modified so that the challenge that is faced at each stage is less formidable. Thus it is assumed that:
•
the school curriculum can be analysed into tasks that can be expressed in the form of smart targets;
• •
these tasks can be arranged into pedagogically viable sequences;
•
through a method of instruction that is very firmly under the teacher’s control, children can be led to acquire new skills, perform them with fluency, maintain them after teacher support is withdrawn, use them in new contexts, and adapt them to different challenges (Solity and Bull 1987).
by checking frequently on a child’s attainments within one of these sequences, teaching can be matched closely to the learning stage the child has reached;
This approach to assessment will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8. Focus on the ‘zone of potential development’ A third approach focuses on the ‘zone of potential development’ as conceptualized by the Russian developmental psychologist, Vygotsky (Daniels 1992). Suppose the performance of two boys on a traditional test is at the same level – for example, a level equivalent to an average 8-year-old’s performance. They are then retested with some adult help – for example, in the form of standard questions prompting them towards the correct solution of problems they could not solve before. One child now attains a score that is just a little better than before, while the other now reaches a level that is associated with much older children. Vygotsky saw the difference between what children can achieve by themselves and the level they can reach with adult help as an operational definition of the ‘zone of potential development’ (ZPD). Those two children have the same zone of actual development (ZAD) but a very different ZPD: the latent learning ability of one was markedly superior. Supporters of this approach argue that traditional (static) tests establish current levels of performance but usually tell us little about the processes that underlie that competence. They also ignore functions that have not yet matured but are in the process of maturing. They focus on the ‘fruits’ of development rather than its ‘buds’ and ‘flowers’. They are retrospective rather than prospective (Vygotsky 1978). Observing embryonic (nascent, emerging) skills closely would provide a better estimate of individuals’ potential for proceeding beyond their
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Assessment in context present level of competence (Campione 1989) and would offer more useful guidance on the kind of teaching that will help them realize that potential. Children are invited to carry out standard tasks that are at the limit of their capabilities. They are given adult assistance to help them to success, and the assistance is monitored closely. Thus the focus of the assessment is on both the children’s performance and on the amount and kind of help they required to achieve it. This approach to assessment is discussed in more detail in Chapter 12. Focus on the learning environment A fourth approach shifts the focus onto the learning environment provided by the school. The assumption is made that SEN are relative and that, for individual children, a full understanding of their SEN can only be developed if one evaluates the learning environment that is provided for them. Perhaps the learning environment in which a child experiences difficulties fails to provide conditions that will facilitate success. The assessment may involve classroom observation, diary records, questionnaires and/or interviews with both children and teachers. The purpose of the analysis is to determine whether there are factors in the learning environment that may cause or exacerbate the child’s learning difficulties (Frederickson and Cline 1995). This approach to assessment is discussed in more detail in Chapter 9. Activity 6.3 provides an opportunity for you to consider how these approaches to assessment might be employed in practice. This activity introduces Activity 6.3 Why is this bilingual pupil not making the progress I would expect? Evaluating some possible hypotheses The question you are asked to address in this task is: Which of the approaches to assessment featured in this section would be most useful to evaluate each of these hypotheses? Remember that they focus on a child who is learning to speak EAL. The list of hypotheses was developed by a team of psychologists and teachers in Surrey (Wright 1991). They suggested different reasons why a bilingual child might be underperforming and examined the implications of each explanation for how teachers might aim to help. Indicate in the right-hand column whether the focus of investigation should be: (a) the individual learner; (b) the teaching programme; (c) the zone of potential development; (d) the learning environment. Hypothesis
1 The child is learning more slowly than others because the ethos and curriculum of the school are experienced as challenging and alien, rather than welcoming and accommodating
Suggested focus for assessment
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2 The child is not learning because the child’s good level of conversational English has misled the teacher into setting tasks that are too abstract for the child’s current language level 3 The child is learning at an appropriate rate, and just needs more time to get used to the demands of working in their second language 4 The child has not attained a basic language proficiency in any language, because neither language has been given adequate opportunities to develop 5 The child is failing because of a preoccupation with stress that is affecting their family or their community 6 The child has a general difficulty in learning compared to other children of the same age 7 The child is failing because of a specific language disorder
another way of thinking about the process of assessment – as a hypothesis-testing process. Wright (1991) and her colleagues regarded assessment as being like a piece of detective work. There was a situation to be explained. They thought of various hypotheses that might provide a satisfactory explanation. In the activity you are asked to suggest what kind of evidence should be collected in order to decide whether any of these hypotheses is justified.
Conclusions While much emphasis is placed on early identification and assessment of SEN, there can be dangers associated with this as well as benefits. We have reviewed a range of measures which should be taken to maximize the likelihood of positive outcomes. These include: parental involvement; multi-disciplinary collaboration; and utilizing the least intrusive intervention approach available. Current arrangements in England for formal assessment of SEN have been subjected to widespread criticism, and there is ongoing debate on possible changes. A major focus in this chapter was on the critical examination of assessment practice. A guiding framework was proposed within which the purpose of any assessment is carefully considered as a first step. Thereafter the information required for that purpose and the methods that can be used to obtain the necessary information can be decided. It was suggested that a series of questions be asked about the proposed plan of the assessment – questions relating to equity and accountability issues as well as questions concerning the theoretical integrity and practical efficacy of the process. Finally, we considered four distinctive approaches to assessment which relate to the different ways of conceptualizing SEN introduced in Chapter 3. Each of these approaches will be described in further detail in later chapters and has both advantages and disadvantages in relation to the questions posed for a critical examination of identification and assessment practice.
7 Bias and equity in assessment
Objectives When you have studied this chapter you should be able to:
• • • •
identify assumptions which are often made in discussing bias and equity in assessment; explain strategies that are employed to reduce test content bias; describe how other sources of bias may affect the assessment process; outline practical measures that can be taken to minimize the impact of these factors.
Contents Introduction Bias in test content Other sources of bias and inequity Who can be fair? Conclusions
Introduction In Chapter 1 we saw that on both sides of the Atlantic there has been a tendency for higher than expected numbers of children from some minority communities to be admitted into some forms of special educational provision. In England and Wales in the early 1970s there were over four times as many children of West Indian immigrants in schools for the ‘educationally subnormal’ as would have been expected from their overall numbers in the child population (Tomlinson 1984). Although the over-representation of African-Caribbean pupils in these schools has been reduced over the years, relatively high numbers continue to be admitted to schools for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties. In Chapter 1 we also drew attention to other group differences in admission to SEN provision – between boys and girls and between children from working-class and middle-class backgrounds. Such group differences in outcome must arise at some point in the process of identification and assessment. It could be that there are uneven patterns of referral that arise from real group differences in how many children require help and how severe their needs are. In relation to gender, for example, it could be that males are more vulnerable to the effects of trauma and
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illness than females or that males externalize their feelings in schools more openly than females and in so doing make themselves more likely to be identified and consequently labelled (OECD 2004). There may, in addition, be a mismatch between the pedagogy of the school and the educational needs of male students (Skårbrevik 2002). In relation to season of birth, the way in which admission to school is organized may lead to unfavourable outcomes for children who are comparatively ‘immature’ within their year group. In England the academic year runs from 1 September to 31 August, so that a child born on 31 August may start school up to a year earlier than a child born only one day later, on 1 September. Both local and national studies have shown that autumn-born children are markedly less likely to be placed on a school’s SEN register or to have a full SEN statement than those born later in the school year, and therefore younger within their age group (Greenwood and Ayre 2005; Crawford et al. 2007). Group differences of this kind tend to be attributed to wider cultural and systemic factors so that fairness is thought of as ‘a sociocultural, rather than a technical, issue’ (Stobart 2005: 275). Many commentators, however, have emphasized bias in referral processes and bias during formal assessment as key sources of inequity in SEN provision. For example, one of the writers who first highlighted the over-representation of black children in schools for the ‘educationally subnormal’ in England (Coard 1971: 15) wrote that, when IQ tests were used, a range of biases operating against the West Indian child . . . apply just as much to the actual questions asked on the IQ test administered to the children, and the very nature of ‘the test situation’. The vocabulary and style of all these IQ tests is white middle class. Many of the questions are capable of being answered by a white middleclass boy, who, because of being middle class, has the right background of experiences with which to answer the questions – regardless of his real intelligence. The black working-class child, who has different life experiences, finds great difficulty in answering many of the questions, even if he is very intelligent. The Californian federal judge, R.F. Peckham, who banned the use of IQ tests with black children at the end of the 1970s, stated: We must recognise at the outset that the history of the IQ test and of special education classes built on IQ testing is not the history of neutral scientific discoveries translated into educational reform. It is, at least in the early years, a history of racial prejudice, of social Darwinism, and of the use of the scientific ‘mystique’ to legitimate such prejudices. (Baca and Cervantes 1989: 16) For Howitt and Owusu-Bempah (1994: 28), tests of intelligence were ‘nothing other than weapons of subordination when used with society’s disadvantaged’. Similar, though less extreme, concerns have been expressed about other forms of test. (For a full discussion, see Gipps and Murphy 1994; Moss et al. 2008.) There is, however, another way of looking at the situation. In this view an advantage of using tests for assessment is that the decision-making process is transparent. If bias is operating in the content of the tests or in the use made of the results, at least it is possible to trace what is happening. Some decisions in education may be affected by bias in a way that is hidden from gaze. One example
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Assessment in context Table 7.1 Proportion of secondary pupils from different ethnic groups allocated to remedial sets for English and mathematics in a Midlands town
Remedial English Remedial maths
West Indian
Indian
Non-minority
17% (30/176) 19% (42/216)
12% (23/188) 12% (26/224)
5% (13/239) 8% (25/304)
Source: Adapted from Scarr et al. (1983) and Roberts (1984).
would be decisions on the placement of pupils when classes are streamed. An early analysis of the educational careers of the children of immigrants in a UK Midlands town showed that they were two to three times as likely as their white peers to be placed in the remedial stream of a secondary school (see Table 7.1). HMI have observed that it is still the case that, where schools emphasize tight setting, some groups learning EAL (notably pupils from the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities) are likely to be placed disproportionately in low sets, especially in English (Ofsted 1999a). Some schools employ standardized attainment tests to profile the educational achievements and needs of groups of children and use the results for planning purposes. The observations of HMI have suggested ‘that it is in those schools with the best ethnic data that the performance of the minority ethnic pupils has improved most strongly’ (Ofsted 1999a: 16). Inspectors considered that analysing performance on a test such as the Cognitive Abilities Test (Thorndike et al. 1986) could assist teachers to plan the organization of a cohort of pupils into groups or to identify students with unused potential by comparing ability with attainment. Focusing specifically on the situation of bilingual pupils, Cline and Shamsi (2000) commented: It is common for pupils learning EAL to obtain scores for nonverbal reasoning that are higher than their scores on L2 language and attainment tests (Valdes and Figueroa, 1994, Table 4.1). Analysing the profile of scores on this type of test battery can help to counter the low expectations that are sometimes held of children in the early stages of learning English. But they added a note of caution: If standardised tests are used for guiding even minor decisions about individuals learning EAL, particular care will always be needed. The appropriateness of the decision may be monitored by seeking confirmatory evidence from earlier school records, if available, or by reviewing any new arrangements or provision after an agreed fixed period on the basis of further teacher observation. (Cline and Shamsi 2000: 39) Similar analyses have highlighted the role of social class in differential outcomes. For example, Sacker et al. (2001) reanalysed earlier national longitudinal data and showed that, while more children whose parents worked in manual occupations had received extra help in school compared to children from professional homes, there was a surprising shift in the balance of the figures when reading, mathematics and psychosocial adjustment scores were taken into account. If that was done, the children from professional homes were more likely
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to have received help: a child from a professional home was one and a half times more likely to receive help than a child from an unskilled occupational background with the same test scores. Commenting on the use of written examinations for selection purposes, Stobart (2005: 278) recognized the possibility that two apparently contradictory viewpoints can be held simultaneously. ‘I can argue that public tests are important as a means of equalizing opportunities and as a necessary corrective to patronage, while at the same time understanding that tests may be biased in favour of one particular gender, social or ethnic group.’ In this chapter we will examine definitions of bias, consider its sources at various points in the assessment process and outline strategies for reducing the impact of bias to a minimum. It cannot be expected that bias will be eliminated altogether. It is not possible (or desirable) to develop methods of educational assessment that are culturally neutral or entirely ‘culture-free’. Child development and school education are embedded in a cultural context which is often unfair (DeBlassie and Franco 1983). The result of any assessment is likely to reflect, in part, the pattern of opportunities that exists. Equity in the assessment of SEN requires us to recognize sources of bias and try to reduce them. It is not helpful to pretend that this area of education can operate independently of the inequalities that characterize other aspects of society and schooling. Activity 7.1 equity
Access, curriculum and assessment questions in relation to
Stobart (2005) did not have SEN assessment in mind when he produced the table below. He was concerned with educational opportunities in general. Building on the work of earlier commentators, he argued that fair assessment in education cannot be separated from questions about fairness in access opportunities and in what the curriculum offers. Discuss how far the questions that he developed in relation to educational assessment in general apply to the particular case of assessment of special educational needs.
• •
Are his questions relevant to SEN assessment? Are there other questions in this field that should be considered under the headings of access, curriculum and assessment?
Access questions
Curricular questions
Assessment questions
Who gets taught and by whom?
Whose knowledge is taught?
What knowledge is assessed and equated with achievement?
Are there differences in the resources available for different groups?
Why is it taught in a particular way to this particular group?
Are the form, content and mode of assessment appropriate for different groups and individuals?
What is incorporated from the cultures of those attending?
How do we enable the histories and cultures of people of colour, and of women, to be taught in responsible and responsive ways?
Is this range of cultural knowledge reflected in definitions of achievement? How does cultural knowledge mediate individuals’ responses to assessment in ways which alter the construct being assessed?
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Bias in test content What is bias and what is fair assessment? The answers to these questions are sometimes based on confused assumptions. It may be thought that if, say, a test item is more difficult for boys than for girls, that item must be ‘unfair to boys’. But an assessment may still be ‘fair’ even if, on average, one group of people consistently obtains higher scores on it than another group. The first group may really be superior at whatever task the assessment is measuring. Williams (1971, 1975) devised a vocabulary test that would be ‘fairer’ to black Americans living in northern US cities than the conventional vocabulary tests in published IQ scales. His ‘Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity’ (the ‘BITCH’ Test) was a multiple-choice vocabulary test comprising 100 items drawn from urban black culture. It was a culture-specific test highlighting the world of the inner city and covering elements of black slang. Two items from the test are: Boot refers to (a) a cotton farmer, (b) a black, (c) an Indian, or (d) a Vietnamese citizen. Yawk is (a) a gun, (b) a fishing hook, (c) a high boot, or (d) a heavy coat. Williams showed that this test favoured black children, while conventional tests favoured white children. Both tests appear to be biased – if the criterion of bias is that tests should not discriminate between groups in terms of outcome. Jensen (1980) described this criterion as ‘the egalitarian fallacy’ – assuming that all human populations are essentially identical or equal in whatever trait or ability the test purports to measure. The purpose of an assessment is to make predictions about the people who are being assessed. In relation to bias the key question then must be whether a test makes equally accurate predictions about all groups of children. In psychometric jargon, a test is biased if it is ‘differentially valid for members of different groups’ (Wood 1991). From this viewpoint what matters is whether a test predicts performance on a criterion measure with equal validity for each social or ethnic group: ‘Bias is a kind of invalidity that harms one group more than another’ (Shepard et al. 1981). One technical method that can be used to investigate this is person-fit measurement where the response patterns of a group of examinees are evaluated against a psychometric model of the test. How ‘unexpected’ (according to the model) is the group’s characteristic response pattern? For example, do they often give surprisingly correct responses to difficult questions or surprisingly incorrect responses to easy questions? For an example of the use of this strategy, see a study by Lamprianou and Boyle (2004) of the performance of minority ethnic pupils and pupils learning EAL on National Curriculum tests in mathematics in England. Another method is the constant ratio model (Thorndike 1971) which tests the assumption that those who do best on a test will prove to be those who do well in the comparison task that requires the use of the abilities that the test is intended to measure. For example, with children it is normally expected that ability test scores will increase with age. This has been the basis of a developmental version of the constant ratio model. The question asked is whether the relationship between test scores and chronological age is the same for children in different ethnic or social groups. This can be illustrated with data on one of the versions of the most widely used individual intelligence scale, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for
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Correlation of IQ with age on WISC-R Scale White males Black males White females Black females
No. of children (6–16 years) 938
137
927
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Correlation of IQ with age: Verbal IQ Performance IQ Full-scale IQ
0.83 0.81 0.86
0.84 0.82 0.85
0.81 0.82 0.84
0.84 0.81 0.85
Source: Adapted from Reynolds (1980).
Children (WISC). Table 7.2 shows the correlation of IQ with age across ethnic groups analysed from the standardization data for the test by Reynolds (1980). If there had been an exact one-for-one matching between IQ and age, the correlations would have been 1; if there had been no relationship at all they would have been 0. All the correlations shown are much closer to 1 than to 0 (at a level that could not have arisen by chance alone). The correlations are no higher for the white children than they are for the black children. Reynolds concluded that the relationship between IQ scores and age was consistent across ethnic groups (even though the scores of black males were lower than those of other groups on average). As far as he was concerned this evidence ‘fails to support armchair claims of test bias . . . with regard to intelligence tests’ (Reynolds 1980: 378). Such confidence might be increased by evidence that various revisions of the WISC predicted scores on tests of educational achievement equally well for African-American, Hispanic and white children (e.g. Reynolds and Kaiser 1990; Weiss and Prifitera 1995). This robust defence of a general intelligence scale does not address the criticism that bias operates in the way such tests are used and interpreted (Helms 2006). In addition, it is important to recognize that the correlation of overall score with age is a broad-brush measure of bias in test content. Problems may occur with a whole test and the way it is conceived, but they may also occur at the level of an individual test item or task. For example, Ribeiro (1980) found that some test items in the WISC-R proved easier than expected for one particular minority group in the USA. Portuguese children coped well with two questions in an advanced section of a test where they were failing most other items: ‘What is the meaning of “migrate”?’ and ‘Why does oil float on water?’. The explanations were simple: migration was a feature of the recent family history of many of the children, and they were used to seeing oil float on water in an altar lamp in their Catholic church. On the other hand, Pollitt et al. (2000) found that a 16-year-old student (MS) who had recently arrived in England as an immigrant from Pakistan had a surprising profile in a mathematics test in which he ‘underperformed’ on some items. One example was this question: It is claimed that in Florida there are eleven lightning strikes every minute. How many is this in a day? In his first language, Urdu, there are separate words for a 12-hour day (‘din’) and a 24-hour day-and-night (‘dinraath’ – literally ‘day and night’). MS chose to use a 12-hour unit for his calculation, which was not what was expected.
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Assessment in context In a classic study of O-level English language exams, Wood (1978) found a similar phenomenon in relation to gender differences. Boys did better than girls on items relating to a passage about a man looking back to a boyhood spent near a railway, while girls did better than boys on a passage about a girl’s ordeal at a dance. On another test he found girls doing better on a passage about a 14-yearold girl and boys doing better on a passage about the Crimean War (Wood 1991: 169). Responsible test developers make a formal commitment to addressing the issue of content bias. For example, in its Code of Practice for the Development of Assessment Instruments, Methods and Systems (1998) the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) stated that in order to produce fair assessments, NFER developers would:
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review and revise questions, items or tasks and related materials to avoid potentially insensitive content or language;
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enact procedures that help to ensure that differences in performance are related primarily to the knowledge, skills, aptitudes or attitudes being assessed rather than to irrelevant factors;
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investigate the performance of people of different ethnic, gender and socioeconomic backgrounds when institutions helping with trials are willing to provide this information and when samples of sufficient size are available;
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carry out the investigation of performance of different groups using data provided on the first actual administration of the assessment;
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provide (where feasible) appropriately modified forms of the assessment procedures for people with disabilities.
Braden and Athnasiou (2005) evaluated the fairness of non-verbal measures of intelligence against a set of criteria that has some overlap in terms of its requirements regarding test development procedures and test characteristics but also some additional requirements:
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The theoretical basis of the instrument should cover multiple abilities and emphasize ‘fluid abilities’ (i.e. those that are not reliant upon prior formal learning).
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The test development process should have included an expert review of item content for the detection of sources of bias.
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The way in which instructions for any test task are presented and the mode of response that is required should not disadvantage test takers from different backgrounds.
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Time limits should not be imposed (or time credits awarded) in such a way as to penalize those from backgrounds where speed of response tends to have a low value.
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There should be practice/teaching items that enable test takers to learn the nature of the task and what is required of them.
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The test development process should include an analysis of possible evidence of bias in the results, for example individual items that have a different profile
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for test takers from different backgrounds or variation in the factor structure of the results between groups (cf. Sireci et al. 2006). If a test or assessment task is developed within a school, it is possible to employ less formal, school-based review strategies for checking on possible item bias. The list of questions given here was adapted for an earlier report (Cline and Shamsi 2000) from Berk (1984) and Tindal and Marston (1990). These authors designed a method of reviewing to assist in the identification of test items which may reflect gender, cultural, racial, regional and/or ethnic content bias and stereotyping. Although there is a form for this purpose, the essential process can be followed through without elaborate form-filling. It is most effective if a number of people examine the test with the checklist in mind and if they come from a range of backgrounds. The review team should include sufficient people from the target minority groups to enable it to predict significant patterns of response accurately. They should each complete the task independently and only compare notes afterwards. Their first task is to identify any individual items to which they feel they cannot give an unequivocal answer ‘yes’ for each of the following questions: 1
Is the item free of offensive gender, cultural, racial, regional and/or ethnic content?
2
Is the item free of gender, cultural, racial, regional and/or ethnic stereotyping?
3
Is the item free of language which could be offensive to a segment of the examinee population?
4
Is the item free of descriptions the content of which could be offensive to a segment of the examinee population?
5
Will the activities described in the item be equally familiar (or equally unfamiliar) to all examinees?
6
Will the words in the item have a common meaning for all examinees?
Note that the questions that are to be asked are specific, focused and explicit. If a more general question is asked (e.g. ‘Would this item be likely to favour white children over black children?’) it is not likely that reviewers would accurately identify items that actually discriminate between ethnic groups (Hieronymous and Hoover 1986). After looking at the individual items separately the reviewers should consider the test as a whole. Each item may have little wrong with it in itself, but the cumulative effect of the test as a whole may still be biased against a particular subgroup of candidates. So, when the task of examining the items separately has been completed, it is necessary to consider the overall balance of the paper or tasks as a whole: even if few individual items cause problems, what about the overall balance? Some researchers have argued that achieving a satisfactory overall balance and heterogeneous range in a test is much more important than eradicating individual biased items (Roznowski and Reith 1999). Sometimes test developers may retain items that they know to be biased because they appear to make a valuable contribution to the predictive validity of the test. For example, Smith and Whetton (1988: 257) wrote of a test they had developed to support occupational selection:
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Assessment in context Of the items used in the final test only three had any evidence of bias, and in each of these the evidence was only slight. These three were left in the test because their other psychometric properties were particularly valuable. Since each of them slightly favoured a different group (whites, non-whites, females), it is unlikely that any noteworthy bias was introduced by their inclusion. In addition to having groups of people from different backgrounds inspecting test items for content bias, a test developer can carry out a statistical investigation. This will aim to find out ‘whether any questions are disproportionately difficult for a particular group once that group’s overall test performance has been taken into account’ (Gipps and Stobart 1993: 60). Other statistical checks are possible both on individual items and on the test as a whole (Reynolds and Kaiser 1990). It is not only aspects of content such as offensiveness or stereotyping that can give rise to bias. There may also be biasing factors in the nature of the tasks that are set. For example, a timed test may favour groups who are culturally prepared for working against time or a rating scale may be used differently by respondents who are culturally prepared to commit themselves to extreme responses and those whose upbringing has made them more ‘modest’ or ‘neutral’ in their use of a scale (Arce-Ferrer 2006). Work on gender bias has shown that the format of a test or exam may also have a differential impact between groups. It has been found both in the UK and the USA that boys tend to do better on multiple-choice exams while girls tend to do better on exams that involve writing essays (Wood 1991; Gipps and Murphy 1994; Willingham and Cole 1997). Various explanations have been offered as to why this happens. Perhaps girls’ essays are evaluated more favourably simply because they are more fluent in their writing and produce longer answers (Pomplun and Capps 1999). Perhaps girls underperform in the multiple-choice format because they are more likely than boys to omit an item when they are unsure of the answer, while boys tend to guess answers more often (Hanna 1986; Linn et al. 1987). Whatever the explanation, the most frequently recommended solution remains valid both for general educational assessment and for SEN assessment: use a variety of methods of assessment so as to minimize the bias associated with any one format (cf. Murphy 1982). At the end of it all an additional check is recommended by Watson et al. (1987) – carry out a post-test interview with the children to check on how they experienced the test’s demands. Activity 7.2
Evaluating a novel test
Du Bois (1939, cited by Norman, 1963) developed a ‘Draw a Horse’ test for use with Pueblo Indian children. He had found that tests that involved drawing a person were not effective for measuring cognitive abilities with this population. (a) What assumptions do you think he made when developing this test? (b) How would you find out whether using it will lead to unbiased assessment?
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Other sources of bias and inequity Discussions of bias and inequity in assessment usually concentrate on the content of tests. But test content is only one of many possible sources of bias. Testing takes place in a social context. Whether the child is in a classroom group or working alone with an adult, it is possible to think about the situation in terms of one of three models. In the examples given below we have assumed that a specialist teacher is testing a child’s educational attainments on their own in a quiet corner of a classroom.
•
A psychometric model. The teacher proffers a test stimulus; the child responds; the teacher measures the child’s response.
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A psychological model. The teacher explains the task and offers a test stimulus; the child makes sense of the task and responds; the teacher assesses the child’s understanding of the task and also the child’s response.
•
A social psychological model. The child compares the situation she or he is in with other familiar situations. The teacher explores the child’s understanding of the situation and observes his or her responses to it. The tasks that the teacher gives the child are seen by both as a special feature of their encounter but not its only feature.
The social psychological model seems to reflect what we know about this situation most satisfactorily. A key concept is ‘intersubjectivity’: speakers take account of what they think their listeners are thinking as they choose what to say and how to say it; they monitor their own speech to make sure that its content and form are such that their listeners can ‘tune into’ it; listeners try to reconstruct what they think the speaker is intending to make known. Thus it is important to explore a child’s understanding of the assessment situation and address any misapprehensions. In the light of the social psychological model it is necessary to examine the overall assessment process. Each phase of that process may be a source of bias:
• •
defining the purpose of the assessment;
• • • • • •
selecting the activities that are to be assessed;
briefing the staff who undertake the assessment and deciding what preliminary information they require; choosing appropriate test materials, if required; interviewing, testing, examining or observing children; evaluating children’s responses; interpreting their performance; deciding on the action to be taken as a result.
In addition, bias may affect the initial identification by teachers of pupils who may have SEN. For example, there are many more boys than girls identified as possibly having dyslexia (Riddell et al. 1994). It is often assumed that this is because biological factors predispose boys to be at greater risk for all language-
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Assessment in context related disorders. Arguing from a different perspective, Benjamin (2003) suggests that the lower rate of referral of girls may arise because girls with SEN are more adept at seeking help for themselves in less obvious and disruptive ways than the boys. However, there is some evidence that schools and teachers play a role in this outcome. In a study in Connecticut, when teachers were asked to identify children with learning disabilities, there was a preponderance of boys in the sample they selected. When tests were used alone to identify children at risk and the opinions of teachers were not sought, this male preponderance was reduced (Shaywitz et al. 1990). Similar data were reported by Wadsworth et al. (1992) with samples of children with reading disabilities in other areas of the USA and in the UK. Cline and Reason (1993) noted that in Shaywitz’s study children who were identified as having a reading disability by the schools but not by the research team’s tests were more likely to show behaviour problems at school. The subgroup numbers in this study were small, and it would be wrong to place too much reliance on a single finding. But the hypothesis must be: if children are a bit of nuisance in the classroom, it will be more likely that any learning difficulties they have are identified and action taken. Hill (1994) has shown that, when teachers and others describe children in the formal SEN assessment procedure, there is a tendency for gender stereotypes to appear. As the studies summarized in Figure 7.1 illustrate, the same behaviour may be interpreted differently in a boy and a girl. How can we reduce the risk of initial identification and assessment in schools being influenced by gender or other bias? Structured observation schemes with Condry and Condry (1976) had subjects (a sample of college students) view a videotape of an infant responding to emotionally arousing stimuli such as a teddy bear and a jack-in-the-box. They found that the students’ ratings of the type and intensity of the emotions the child displayed varied depending on whether they had been told the child was a boy or a girl. All the students saw the same child responding to the same stimuli. But those who thought the child was a boy were more likely to rate an ambiguous negative response to one of the stimuli as anger, whereas, if the same child was thought to be a girl, ‘she’ was seen as displaying the emotion of fear in this situation. In a later study by Condry and Ross (1985), another sample of students was shown a videotape of two preschool children playing roughly in the snow. Their snowsuits disguised their actual gender, and the investigators systematically varied the gender labels used to describe the children. The students were asked to rate the degree of aggression and affection shown by one of the two children. They tended to rate the target child as significantly less aggressive when they thought she or he was a boy playing with another boy than when they thought he or she was a girl or a boy playing with a girl. This effect was particularly strong among participants with more experience with children. It appeared that they probably expected a higher general level of aggression in play between boys than in the other conditions. Condry and Ross suggested that this may have led them either to discount the aggressiveness they observed on the videotape if they thought the participants were boys or to inflate it if they thought they were girls or both: ‘It may not be fair, and it certainly is not equal, but from the results of this study it looks as if boys and girls really are judged differently in terms of what constitutes aggression’. Figure 7.1
Interpretations of the same behaviour in a boy and a girl
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well-defined subheadings make it less likely that behaviour that is not expected will be overlooked. Schemes that ask specific questions about the frequency and severity of particular types of incident make it less likely that vague assertions about extreme behaviour will be made without qualification. In this situation, as in others, there are many advantages to drawing upon multiple sources of evidence. Sometimes, for example, it can be helpful to have a second adult observing the work of the classroom for a short time with a specific brief to investigate what happens from the perspective of the target pupil. When this was arranged in a Year 5 class by Williams (1996), another teacher interpreted various episodes during a reading activity quite differently from the class teacher. The target pupil was Harry, a mainstream pupil with language-related learning difficulties. Here is a record of the same episode as seen by the teacher and by the colleague who had agreed to observe the lesson by ‘pupil shadowing’ (Galloway and Banes 1994): Class teacher: Harry was asked an open-ended question which he struggled to answer and he fidgeted. To avoid focusing attention on Harry’s difficulty it was passed to another child in the group. Observer: Harry needed more time to answer an open-ended question. When someone else was asked to answer the question he was left muttering. Activity 7.3 Approaches to recording observations of children’s learning style Below are two examples of published frameworks for observation relating to learning style in the classroom. They contrast in that the first is intended solely to provide headings under which a teacher will record comments, while the second aims to help teachers discriminate between different levels of severity by suggesting specific mini-scenarios that illustrate each level. (a) We think that the format of the first approach may be more liable to the risk of observational bias. What reasons might there be for that view? (b) On the other hand, the text of the second example includes many vague and value-laden phrases which could, in themselves, encourage a biased approach to the observation task. Can you suggest ways of rewording the two items in the second example so as to reduce that risk? This extract is taken from an account by Reid (1997) of a strategy for the assessment of dyslexia in the classroom. This section concerns observational assessment. The framework is not intended to be a checklist ‘but a guide to the type of factors which should be observed in identifying learning strategies, strengths and weaknesses’ (p. 75). Attention /concentration Focus on task Major sources of distraction Concentration span in different tasks
Comments
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Assessment in context
These items are taken from a ‘Guide to the Child’s Learning Skills’ developed by Stott (1978). For comparison with the extract above, items relating to concentration and distractibility have been selected. E: He/she is easily distracted Somewhat: Allows himself to be distracted to the extent that he doesn’t get on with the job in hand. Definite:
Creates frequent distractions for himself and others; behaves in a silly clowning way or creates disturbances.
Severe:
Flits rapidly from one momentary interest to another without ever doing anything productive.
N: He/she seems to try to attend, and is not hyperactive or distractible, but cannot concentrate. Somewhat: Seems to try hard but cannot keep his mind on the task, and gets things wrong that he was getting right. Definite:
As soon as he is asked anything his mind flies off at a tangent.
Severe:
Cannot be induced to focus his attention on anything.
When observing and recording children’s academic achievements, pupil profiling systems have many advantages over repeated testing on the one hand and unstructured observation on the other (Sheil and Forde 1995). A profiling system, such as the English Foundation Stage Profile (QCA 2003a), normally comprises three elements:
•
Indicators. Statements describing pupils’ achievements that are normally linked to the objectives of the curriculum.
•
Levels/bands. Indicators are grouped together within what is thought to be the same broad developmental level or band of achievement. A pupil’s performance is rated as a whole across indicators so that a summary statement can be made about the level reached.
•
Assessment tasks and contexts. Special assessment tasks may be set for the purpose, or the assessment may be based on portfolios of pupils’ work or notes of observations made by teachers during everyday classroom activities.
Where there are groups of children of whom teachers’ expectations tend to be low (e.g. many minorities) or whose performance tends to be variable (e.g. recently arrived refugees), a system of this kind may have additional benefits, quite apart from any advantages that apply to all pupils. The significant advantage is that in these schemes performance is rated over time and teachers’ judgements are made in a range of curricular contexts. The effect is that, if a child underperforms on one occasion because of problems with the language or content of a particular task, this will be compensated for on another occasion if the foundation of competence in the subject is really established at the target level. In relation to reading, it was found in one study that teacher ratings on a reading scale of this kind were less
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affected by the fluency in English of children learning EAL than were scores on the London Reading Test given at around the same time (Hester et al. 1988). When external specialists become directly involved in advising on a child, they will initially be reliant on the information supplied to them by those who have been working with the child previously, particularly teachers. Where schools have successfully followed the procedures set out in the revised Code of Practice, there will already be careful records of the child’s earlier IEPs and response to them. It will be possible, in the words of the Code, for external specialists such as educational psychologists to look at ‘the pupil’s records in order to establish which strategies have already been employed and which targets have been set and achieved’ (DfES 2001a: para. 5.57). If they have not previously been involved, the first impressions that they gain from the records at this point may have a significant effect on their approach to the assessment process. How far will the reports they read give them a biased view of the situation? What range of information will they receive? How far will the discussions and the paperwork at this stage be open and accessible to the child and parents? What provision will be made for interpreters to attend meetings and for documents to be translated where the family will otherwise be excluded from the process? The answers to such questions will determine to what extent there are effective safeguards against bias during this phase of assessment. Activity 7.4 will enable you to evaluate some examples of the kinds of summary reports that have been written for such purposes in the past. Activity 7.4
Analysis of teachers’ reports on children causing concern
Read the following three reports carefully. (a) Circle any phrases that seem to you to be based on a stereotype about the group to which the child belongs and therefore liable to contribute to a biased impression. (b) Underline any information or description that seems to you vague or imprecise. Note how it might have been presented more exactly, taking into consideration whether the advantages for the SEN assessment process would justify the extra time that would be required of the person preparing the report. (c) To what extent do these descriptions ‘identify which strategies have already been employed and which targets have been set and achieved’ (DfEE 2000a: para. 6.16)? What additional information would need to be obtained in each case? Rushana (aged 8) is the eldest of four children in her household. She lives with her parents, who both came to the UK from the Sylhet area of Bangladesh a few years before she was born. She herself visited Sylhet once two years ago to see her family. I think her grandmother was ill at the time. She did not attend school there and missed two terms of Year 2 in this school. Otherwise her attendance has been regular since she was first admitted to the part-time nursery class at the age of 4. She speaks fluent English now, though her only language on entry to the nursery class was Sylheti. It is reported that she uses Sylheti in almost all conversations with her parents and adult relatives at home. At school she is seen as a successful English speaker who does not need support from the part-time
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teacher of EAL. She used to enjoy bilingual support sessions with a visiting Bengali teacher, especially traditional singing. But unfortunately these sessions are no longer available. Now in Year 4 she is presenting with serious learning difficulties in the classroom. She can make out most of the words in the reading book she has (which I would judge suitable for a Year 3 child), but her fluency is appalling, and she does not seem to take in much of what she reads. She lacks confidence as a writer and has very poor spelling. In cooperative group work she has a strong tendency to allow others to take all the initiatives. Jean-Paul was 10 when he arrived in the UK two years ago from Mauritius to join his mother. I understand that he attended school in Mauritius regularly, though he himself seems to have only very hazy memories of that (in contrast to his memories of his grandmother’s home there which seem to be vivid and happy). He now speaks the French dialect of Mauritius at home with his mother and communicates with his white, UK-born stepfather in English, a language he is still learning. Because there are very few children from linguistic minority families in this area, the school has no extra provision for meeting his language needs. It is his second school in the UK, and when he arrived here four terms ago he had enough English to get by in the classroom. There is increasing concern about his fighting with other children in school (where he says people call him names) and his bullying of his younger half-brother and half-sister at home. While he is certainly not making good progress in school subjects either, our primary concern is the problems with his behaviour. He has not responded well to a structured intervention by the Behaviour Support Teaching Service. We have not seen his mother at school. His stepfather seems to think we should take a stronger line with him and finds it hard to accept that we do not use corporal punishment at all. Everton (aged 13) has been a cause of concern to us for about two years. He tends to be sullen and aggressive and disrupts lessons. He has a very violent nature and has been violent to other boys on several occasions. Recently he was charged with thefts outside school and is due to appear in court in a month’s time. We estimate his general ability to be about average. He has shown some flair in English and gets on well with his English teacher. But other subject teachers say he could do well but spoils himself with bad behaviour. He is disrespectful to teachers and a bully with his classmates. The one subject he seems to find really difficult is mathematics, and he often skips maths lessons. Otherwise his attendance is very good. He is resentful of any kind of authority and hence finds it difficult to do the work that is set. I have written to his parents three or four times and sent them progress reports going back over a year. But in and out of class he constantly causes trouble – sometimes with violence. His father says that at home he is quick tempered and cannot have his leg pulled. Both parents are very concerned about him. They come from Jamaica and are leading members of the Pentecostal church on the High Street.
Who can be fair? Some commentators have argued that all children should have professional support from the same background as themselves. For some black people it seems ‘quite obvious that many black parents and pupils will be at a serious disadvantage . . . in the absence of black psychologists . . . and other
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black professionals’ (Haringey Black Pressure Group on Education 1984: 9). During the 1970s there was some indirect research evidence that seemed to support that view. For example, Strickland (1972) found that black children in her sample trusted a black interviewer more than they trusted a white interviewer. However, it is impossible to rely totally on indirect evidence. When researchers tried to show directly that the race of an examiner would affect the scores children obtained in tests, their results were inconsistent (Jensen 1980; Graziano et al. 1982). Many other factors seem to be involved. For example, the age of the pupils, the region where they live and the nature of the assessment task may each affect whether or not performance changes with the race of the examiner. In any case, in a multiethnic and multilingual society where children in a conurbation such as London may speak more than 300 languages at home, it will never be possible to offer ethnic and linguistic matching to all children who may require SEN assessment. The matching would need to cover not just language but dialect, and not just ethnic background but culture and regional area of origin. This would be impossible. In addition, there is a danger of placing those psychologists and teachers who speak minority languages in a professional ghetto working mainly with people from the same communal background and having restricted opportunities for wider responsibility. An alternative strategy (Cline 1998) is to lay an obligation on trainers, employers and the psychologists and teachers themselves to ensure that all professionals are competent to work effectively with all ethnic and linguistic groups in their area. There is a major challenge for services and for university departments in establishing the necessary training as a normal element of all initial and inservice professional training. In some LA services a crucial contribution has been made by the creation of various kinds of liaison and advisory posts (e.g. Rogers and Pratten 1996). The role of workers from ethnic and linguistic minority communities remains critical not only to support effective communication with families (DfES 2004a), but also to contribute to the raising of multifaceted cultural awareness within the staff group. What is being argued here should not take away the pressure for trainers and employers to ensure that the personnel in professional services reflect the composition of the communities they serve more closely. The argument simply concerns what the personnel should be doing once they are appointed and how they should be trained to do it (cf. DECP 2006). The following list of some of the key areas of expertise that are required is based on recommendations made by an American Psychological Association Task Force on Cross-Cultural School Psychology Competencies (Rogers et al. 1999). The text refers to psychologists throughout but would equally apply to all other advisers and specialists working with children with SEN, including specialist teachers. The expectations held up for school psychologists by this task force include the following elements. Ethical issues • They will be aware of the unique ethical challenges and complex ethical issues faced when delivering services to racially, ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse individuals in schools.
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•
They will uphold ethical standards. The example is given that, if asked to assess the language and cognitive skills of a non-English speaking child without adequate resources, materials, interpreters or training, the psychologist will not personally fulfil the request. Instead they will seek out the assistance of an appropriately trained person who is skilled in the language and culture of the child.
School culture and educational policy • They will be well informed and aware of the systemic issues associated with cases referred to them for services. So, in this case, they will be knowledgeable about institutional racism, cultural misinformation and other systemic issues affecting the education of students from culturally and linguistically diverse populations.
•
They will provide advice and support to develop systems interventions to support the educational success of culturally and linguistically diverse learners.
•
When working with racially, ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse children and their families, they will have an ethical and professional responsibility to assess whether problems presumed to reside within the student may be manifestations of systemic biases in the institution(s) serving the child. So they will rule out systemic factors as causal influences in the student’s situation before proceeding with individually focused assessment or intervention.
Psychological and educational assessment • They will ensure that the assessments in which they are involved comprise a comprehensive process of gathering information about students that explicitly takes account of the impact of sociocultural, environmental, political, experiential and language-based factors.
•
They will consider cultural sources of information about students and search for culture-specific confirming data. Thus, when conducting observations, they will use appropriate comparison group members so that, for example, a second language learner would be compared to another second language learner.
•
They will develop expertise in assessing the student’s biculturalism and will be supportive of it. When conducting an assessment, they will take into account language and other behaviour considered to be socially appropriate in the culture of the child.
•
They will incorporate cultural and linguistic information in their verbal advice and written reports.
•
They will recognize the limitations of standardized instruments and the ramifications of using such instruments in the assessment of racially, ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse students. For example, if tests are used for a group or individual for which appropriate norms do not exist, they will report any findings in a descriptive and qualitative manner.
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Consultation • They will aim to become skilled in developing a multicultural consultation model which reflects an understanding of cultural values and the implications for working with culturally diverse families.
•
They will develop culturally sensitive verbal and non-verbal communication skills and an awareness of how their own cultural background and biases may influence their ability to communicate effectively with culturally diverse students, school personnel and family members.
•
They will learn about the characteristic family structures, hierarchies, values and beliefs of the communities with which they work. They will aim to be knowledgeable about the main features of the communities, their history and their resources. For example, where a culture structures social interactions hierarchically and prescribes gender roles within the hierarchy, they will initiate working contacts with families taking these expectations into account.
•
They will develop strong community networks with culturally knowledgeable practitioners. They will be aware of institutional barriers that may prevent minority group members from accessing services and will be prepared to make different arrangements to facilitate access.
If all specialist teachers and psychologists in multiethnic communities can develop expertise along these lines, then calls for all children to be assessed by professionals from the same background as themselves will be seen as unnecessary. The more desirable and practicable aim must be that, whatever their own background, those responsible become knowledgeable about and sensitive to the key features of the children’s culture and languages. Similar principles apply also when those involved in SEN assessment are working across other, less dramatic gaps, such as those of social class and gender. The training requirements represent a major challenge. It is not just a matter of generating the accretion of some new items of factual knowledge. A professional who will be sensitive across the range of diversity found in contemporary schools is likely to have needed to go through a process of restructuring many of their key attitudes and beliefs (Causey et al. 2000). Ultimately, the key to reducing assessment bias in practice lies in the principle set out by Watson et al. (1987): know yourself, and the task, so that you can know the child.
Conclusions The goal of equity in the support given to children who may have SEN requires constant vigilance and regular review. The population profile of pupils with SEN statements remains quite different from the profile of the school population as a whole. It is possible that some aspects of this mismatch reflect the impact of genetic and environmental factors on the development of SEN, as illustrated in Chapter 5. However, there is a good deal of evidence that it may also have been influenced by the operation of systematic bias in procedures for the identification and assessment of SEN. In this chapter we have examined different ways in which processes of bias can affect the judgements that are made during assessment. Test bias is important
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Assessment in context and can be reduced significantly, even if it cannot be altogether eliminated. But test bias is not the only source of distortion during the assessment process. Testing takes place in a social context, and assessment involves several stages apart from any testing that may be included. Each phase of the process may be affected by bias. We gave particular attention to how bias can be reduced in initial identification processes in school. Ultimately the greatest safeguard against bias will be if the assessment draws upon multiple sources of evidence. When this is done, the viewpoints of more than one observer are likely to be taken into account. In the last section of the chapter we asked the question that is implied by that strategy – who can be fair? A response to the challenge must involve appreciating the areas of expertise that are needed in a diverse society and developing the necessary arrangements for initial training and continuing professional development. Working towards a reduction in the bias affecting assessment is a task for services and systems as well as for individuals.
8 Assessment for learning
Objectives When you have studied this chapter you should be able to:
• • • •
explain why there has been increasing interest in assessment for learning (AfL) in recent years; describe key strategies for implementing AfL in the classroom; discuss ways in which AfL can be extended for children with SEN by more structured and intensive approaches, such as precision teaching; outline ways in which AfL can be extended for children learning English as an additional language through use of the Cummins quadrant.
Contents Introduction
• •
Assessment focused on the teaching programme for pupils with SEN Assessment for learning
Implementing assessment for learning
• •
Key strategies Supporting teacher development of AfL
Assessment for learning and pupils with SEN
• • •
Introduction to precision teaching Precision teaching: a case-study example Precision teaching: issues in implementation
Assessment for learning and pupils learning EAL
• •
The Cummins quadrant Using the Cummins quadrant in differential assessment
Conclusions
Introduction In Chapter 6 the following distinctive approaches to the assessment of SEN were outlined:
• •
assessment focused on the learner; assessment focused on the teaching programme;
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• •
assessment focused on the zone of potential development; assessment focused on the learning environment.
This chapter is devoted to the second of these, assessment focused on the teaching programme. In the 1980s assessment approaches focused on the teaching programme gained prominence in the work with children who have SEN. Over the past decade in the UK, assessment for learning (AfL) approaches have been advocated as of key importance in raising attainment for all children.
Assessment focused on the teaching programme for pupils with SEN Gickling and Havertape (1981: 376) argued that the most pervasive cause of learning difficulties was that for some children ‘the curriculum moves too fast and demands too much in relation to their existing skills. They get further and further behind and are entrenched in a failure cycle.’ They argued for the importance of eliminating this instructional mismatch through the identification of the child’s entry skills in relation to the curriculum, which would allow appropriate tasks and materials to be selected accordingly. A number of different terms have been used to describe this approach to assessment, of which the most common in Britain are curriculum-based assessment (CBA), curriculum-related assessment, curriculum-based measurement and assessment through teaching. In this chapter we will use the term CBA to refer to this body of research, mainly conducted with pupils who have SEN, and will adopt the definition proposed by Tucker (1985: 200): ‘Curriculum based assessment properly includes any procedure that directly assesses student performance within the course content for the purpose of determining that student’s instructional needs.’ In CBA the pupil’s performance is compared in an ongoing way to each new set of curriculum demands as they are presented in the classroom. Gickling and Thompson (1985) reported that without CBA relevant adjustments were rarely made by teachers for children whose performance deviated significantly from the norm expected for their age. Individualization and differentiation rarely happened and children, increasingly unable to do assigned work, tended to get further behind and become entrenched in a cycle of ‘curriculum related failure’. Another important influence on the shift towards CBA in the 1980s was a growing appreciation of the extent to which norm-referenced tests commonly used in making special education placement decisions were affected by cultural and social bias. As illustrated in Chapter 7, cultural bias is apparent in tests where a significant proportion of the items may be outside the cultural experience, customs or values of particular groups of children. The use of norms was another contentious issue as few of the standardized norm-referenced assessment measures which were commonly used in the assessment of children’s SEN at the time reported the systematic inclusion of minority children in their standardization samples. It was recognized also that even those measures which had been standardized on populations including proportions of children from minority ethnic groups might not be applicable in communities where there was a different ethnic mix. However, concerns were also raised about the validity of substituting informal teacher observation and identification for standardized tests. As was
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pointed out in Chapter 7, at least the extent to which standardized tests are biased can be ascertained. This led some school districts in the USA (in Louisiana, for example) to set a requirement for systematic and structured pre-referral data to be collected by teachers using CBA in order to counter discriminatory practices in referral to special education services. The attorney for the plaintiffs in an influential court case (Luke v. Nix) quoted research which showed teachers to be biased in their judgements about children’s attainment of teaching objectives in a way which underestimated the achievements of children from black and minority ethnic communities. In a scathing attack upon ‘the subjective and chaotic referral methods of individual teachers’, the attorney pointed out that ‘evidence abounds that regular teachers initiate referrals without documenting that alternative instructional strategies have been attempted and evaluated’, and concluded that ‘teachers have manifested a pervasive propensity to refer students who “bother them”. The result is a haphazard, idiosyncratic referral method whereby different teachers refer different types of students because different student traits bother them’ (Galigan 1985: 290). In England and Wales the main purpose of assessment as presented in the SEN Code of Practice is to allow decisions to be made about the adequacy of progress: ‘a school’s system for observing and assessing the progress of individual children should provide information about areas where a child is not progressing satisfactorily even though the teaching style has been differentiated’ (DfES 2001a: 30). It is only when professions from outside the school are consulted at School Action Plus that there is mention of assessment for teaching in addition, where it is suggested that they may ‘provide more specialist assessments that can inform planning and the measurement of a pupil’s progress’ (DfES 2001a: 55). Later in this chapter we will focus in particular on one such approach, precision teaching.
Activity 8.1 Potential advantages of assessment focused on the teaching programme Here are some of the potential advantages which have been claimed for CBA with pupils who have SEN. As you read this chapter, keep a running record of any evidence that supports these claims. Consider also and note the extent to which each point could equally be claimed as an advantage of AfL for all pupils. Potential advantage
Supportive evidence for CBA and pupils with SEN
It is not necessary to take a lot of ‘time out’ for assessment since assessment, teaching and monitoring of progress are combined. It can provide information that is of direct and immediate use in the classroom on which specific skills and knowledge the child has and has not mastered.
for AfL and all pupils
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Potential advantage
Supportive evidence for CBA and pupils with SEN
for AfL and all pupils
It offers an immediate check on the appropriateness of particular tasks and materials for particular children. Even ‘graded’ books and sets of worksheets contain substantial variation in level of difficulty from page to page and task to task. If a lowachieving child is performing erratically it may well reflect constant fluctuation between instructional and frustration level tasks. It enables teachers to chart small steps in progress towards the achievement of major curriculum objectives or National Curriculum attainment targets. Step size and pacing of individual programmes can be justified. Progress can be communicated in a way which is comprehensible to parents and children. It generates detailed assessment information which can be readily appreciated by other professionals who may be consulted about a child’s special needs. It fulfils the school’s responsibilities for assessment, intervention and evaluation and will provide a convincing basis for any case made for the provision of extra resources. The approach is based on the optimistic assumption that all children can make learning progress given appropriate teaching. Where difficulties are encountered it is the teaching programme, not the child, that is labelled problematic and targeted for change.
Assessment for learning AfL is defined in DfES publications as ‘the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there’ (Assessment Reform Group 1999). It has been embraced by the government in England, made central to their core principles for teaching and learning and identified as a key element of the thrust towards ‘personalized learning’, which aims to differentiate teaching to engage and fully develop all learners. Detailed guidance on implementation strategies are provided for primary (DfES 2004b) and secondary schools (DfES 2006g).
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In Scotland also AfL has been adopted as a central strand in effective teaching. It forms part of a national initiative, Assessment is for Learning. ‘Assessment for learning focuses on the gap between where a learner is in their learning, and where they need to be – the desired goal. This can be achieved through processes such as sharing criteria with learners, effective questioning and feedback’ (Learning and Teaching Scotland 2007). DfES publications (e.g., DfES 2007c) differentiate the purpose of AfL from the purpose of end-of-year or Key Stage National Curriculum assessments:
•
Assessment for learning (also known as formative assessment) is any assessment activity which informs the next steps to learning.
•
Assessment of learning (also known as summative assessment) is any assessment which summarizes where learners are at a given point in time – it provides a snapshot of what has been learned.
In addition, Wiliam and Thompson (2008) identify a third purpose of educational assessment: evaluative assessment which focuses on the appraisal of the quality of educational institutions or programs. The recent development of interest in the use of formative assessment has been identified as an important example of research-driven change at national level in the UK (Watson 2006). The acknowledged source of this impetus was an article (Black and Wiliam 1998a) which reviewed 250 published research studies in order to address the question whether there is evidence that improving formative assessment raises standards. They concluded that the answer to this question was a clear ‘yes’. Most significantly, they then followed up this research journal article with a pamphlet summarizing their findings which was aimed at teachers and policy makers (Black and Wiliam 1998b). Four years later they were able to report the quite spectacular attention the pamphlet had attracted, with sales of over 20,000 copies and wide quotation of its conclusions and recommendations (Black et al. 2002). In examining reasons for the success of this publication in bringing research findings to public attention, the quantitative evidence cited is one factor identified by one of the authors: The significant impact of that review, notably on some subsequent policy shifts in the UK, but also in supporting other work on formative assessment in other countries, owes much to its emphasis on the warrants for the claims of such work provided by the quantitative evidence of learning gains. (Broadfoot and Black 2004: 16) However, of even greater significance may be the way in which technical quantitative findings about the effects of formative assessment initiatives on pupil learning outcomes were illustrated by reference to the potential impact they could have on the achievement of current educational goals of schools and national governments. Figure 8.1 provides an example of the way in which this was done. The effect sizes quoted are from a meta-analysis (highly structured quantitative review) conducted by Fuchs and Fuchs (1986), leading proponents of CBA, of 23 studies, most involving children with SEN. This allowed the further conclusion to be drawn that ‘Some of these studies exhibit another important feature. Many of them show that improved formative assessment helps the (so-called) low
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The formative assessment experiments produce typical effect sizes of between 0.4 and 0.7: such effect sizes are larger than most of those found for educational interventions. The following examples illustrate some practical consequences of such large gains:
•
An effect size of 0.4 would mean that the average pupil involved in an innovation would record the same achievement as a pupil just in the top 35 per cent of those not so involved.
•
A gain of effect size 0.4 would improve performances of pupils in GCSE by between one and two grades.
•
A gain of effect size 0.7, if realized in the recent international comparative studies in mathematics (TIMSS; Beaton et al. 1996), would raise England from the middle of the 41 countries involved to being one of the top five.
Figure 8.1
Illustrating the potential impact of formative assessment
Source: Black and Wiliam (1998b).
attainers more than the rest, and so reduces the spread of attainment whilst also raising it overall’ (Black and Wiliam 1998b: 4). Black and Wiliam (1998a) identify CBA as a formative assessment approach and note that ‘many of its features would be essential in any incorporation of formative assessment into a learning programme’ (1998a: 45). However, they identify a number of distinctive features of CBA, such as sharply focused specially designed test probes and the use of these frequently to gives graphs of performance against time. Later in this chapter we will give consideration to one specific approach which has these features, precision teaching, and will consider whether the inclusion of such features may be particularly important for pupils experiencing substantial and complex learning difficulties. Drawing on the work of Shinn and Hubbard (1992) who advocate curriculum-based measurement and a problem-solving approach to assessment for children with SEN, Black and Wiliam (1998a) argue for a similar paradigm shift in the predominant approach in schools to assessment for all children (see Table 8.1). They suggest that this table be read alongside the research findings on strategies in order to identify the essential elements of any AfL initiative. In the next section of this chapter these essential elements and strategies will be described and key research findings highlighted.
Implementing assessment for learning Key strategies AfL can be conceptualized as comprising five key strategies and one ‘big idea’ (Wiliam and Thompson 2008). The ‘big idea’ is that evidence about a pupil’s learning should be used to adjust the teaching they receive in order to better meet their needs. The five key strategies are: 1
Clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success.
Assessment for learning Table 8.1
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Different questions arising from a paradigm shift in assessment in schools
Dimension
Current assessment paradigm
Problem-solving paradigm
Purpose
Do assessment results spread out individuals facilitating classification/placement into groups? Does the assessment device measure what it says it measures? Criterion-related validity: Does the test correlate with other tests purporting to increase the same thing? Construct validity: Does the test display a stable factor structure? Groups: Probabilistic statements about individuals: Do students with similar assessment results most likely display similar characteristics? Summative: Does the assessment indicate whether or not the intervention did work? Does the assessment provide an indirect measure of an unobservable construct? Does the assessment identify relevant student characteristics that contribute to problem etiology?
Does assessment result in socially meaningful student outcomes for the individual? Are the inferences and actions based on test scores adequate and appropriate (Messick 1989)? Treatment validity: Do decisions regarding target behaviours and treatments based on knowledge obtained from the assessment procedure result in better student outcomes than decisions based on alternative procedures (Hayes et al. 1983)?
Test validity
Unit of analysis
Time line
Level of inference Locus of the problem
Focus
Problem certification: Does assessment accurately identify problems? Test Are test scores stable over time? reliability Are scores based on different behaviour samples, obtained in different contexts/settings consistent? Context Does the assessment provide a comparison with students receiving a nationally representative range of curriculum and instruction? Dimension of Does the assessment provide dependent information regarding the level variable of pupil performance?
Source: Black and Wiliam (1998a).
Individuals: Does assessment show that this treatment is working for this student?
Formative: Does the assessment indicate that this treatment is working for this student? Does the assessment directly measure important target behaviours or skills? Does assessment identify relevant curriculum, instruction and contextual factors [that] contribute to problem solution? Problem solution: Does the assessment accurately identify solutions? What factors account for the variability in student performance?
Does the assessment provide a comparison with students receiving comparable curriculum and instruction?
Does the assessment provide information regarding the level of pupil performance and the slope of pupil progress?
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Engineering effective classroom discussions, questions, and learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning.
3
Providing feedback that moves learners forward.
4
Activating students as instructional resources for one another.
5 Activating students as the owners of their own learning. (Wiliam and Thompson 2008: 64). These key strategies are elaborated in the subsections below, drawing on ideas proposed, findings reported and research reviewed by Black et al. (2002), DfES (2004b, 2007c), Leahy et al. (2005) and Wiliam et al. (2004). Clarify and share intentions and criteria This involves teachers sharing their intended learning outcomes for a lesson with the pupils, using appropriate language and/or examples to ensure understanding. The evidence suggests that learning is more effective when pupils understand what they are trying to achieve and why. The learning outcomes make clear what the pupils should know or be able to do by the end of the lesson. Specifying success criteria for each learning task will enable the teacher and pupils to judge how well each outcome has been achieved. Circulating work examples that a previous year’s class has completed and having exemplar material on display are suggested as ways of supplementing oral and written descriptions of intended learning outcomes. In addition, they can provide a focus for identification, discussion and clarification of success criteria. Engineer effective classroom discussion The element of discussion that has received most attention is questioning. Traditionally most teacher questions seek information from pupils that is already known to the teacher: ‘correct’ answers to factual questions about content already taught. Often each question is answered by just one pupil, someone who has put up their hand because they think that they know the answer. If a pupil does not give the answer the teacher is looking for the teacher will usually call on one or more additional pupils until the desired answer is obtained. This approach fails to provide information about what most pupils in the class know about the topic and is generally not used to investigate and correct misconceptions. It may provide or reinforce knowledge of a specific fact for those pupils attending to the answer. In contrast, in an AfL approach a question is only considered worth asking if it provides information that is used to adjust the teaching provided. Examples of such question types are:
•
Questions to reveal what pupils know at the start of a lesson so that a judgement can be made about where to begin teaching – ‘range-finding’ questions.
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Questions to check understanding during the lesson, providing ‘hinge points’ where the teacher can take different routes through the content and learning activities depending on the pupils’ responses.
•
Questions that require all pupils to respond – for example, questions that are asked in a multiple-choice format, where each pupil is provided with a set of
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cards: A, B, C and D. The teacher will use this information to decide which pupils to ask to discuss the reasons for the option they have selected. All pupils are encouraged to maintain engagement as they know they may be called on to contribute to the discussion – they can no longer opt out by not raising their hand. To encourage pupils to think carefully about teacher questions, teachers are advised to allow several seconds of ‘wait time’ before selecting a pupil to contribute. A further strategy designed to promote engagement and support less confident pupils is ‘talk partners’, where pupils are asked to share their ideas in pairs before the teacher selects someone to share their ideas with the whole class. Provide feedback that moves learners forward Recommendations are offered on written feedback (marking) and on oral feedback in the classroom. Both psychological theory and research evidence suggest that giving marks or grades to a pupil’s work is not merely ineffective in promoting learning but may have counterproductive effects on both learning and motivation. If a teacher provides written feedback and a grade, most pupils will focus on the grade and disregard the written feedback. ‘Comment-only’ marking is now widely advocated as an AfL tactic. However, to be effective in promoting learning the comments provided have to provoke thinking. Generally encouraging comments (‘Your poem works brilliantly, very well done’) are unlikely to be sufficiently specific in order to:
•
identify what has been done well in relation to the desired learning outcomes and what still needs improvement;
•
give guidance on how to make necessary improvement.
It is additionally advised that opportunities should be provided for pupils to read and follow up comments and to make recommended improvements to their work. It is recommended that oral feedback should:
•
be constructive and informative in order to help pupils take the next steps in their learning;
•
consciously model the language that pupils can use in giving feedback to their teacher and peers;
•
be developmental, recognizing pupils’ efforts and achievements and offering specific information on ways forward in relation to the desired learning outcomes;
•
say when an answer is wrong to avoid confusion or reinforcing misconceptions.
In addition, as can be seen from Figure 8.2, staff are cautioned to reflect on unintentional negative messages that may be conveyed by the language used to talk about difficulty with learning. Children’s sensitivity to such messages was well illustrated by a series of studies reported by Graham (1984). Sympathetic teacher responses toward a pupil who had failed at a task led both the pupil themselves and their peers to conclude that the teacher did not consider them sufficiently able to succeed, and subsequently led to a decline in the pupil’s expectations for success on the task. By
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Figure 8.2 Language for talking about difficulties to maintain positive expectancies while providing appropriate support Source: DfES (2004b).
contrast, an angry response from the teacher was more likely to be interpreted as indicating the teacher believed that the pupil could succeed but had not tried hard enough. Paradoxically, a sympathetic teacher motivated by a desire to protect the self-esteem of a student experiencing difficulties might unwittingly use language that undermines both the pupil’s self-esteem and expectations for success. However, this should not be taken to imply that angry responses to pupils experiencing difficulties are preferable! Georgiou et al. (2002) found that while anger was associated with a perception of insufficient effort, it was also associated with tendency for teachers to give up efforts to help the pupil improve. This was particularly so when the teacher had a lower sense of efficacy and was unwilling to accept part of the responsibility for the pupil’s failures. The AfL approach, which regards the teacher and pupils as being engaged in an ongoing process of working together to achieve desired learning outcomes, provides a context for a more productive set of attributions from both. Activate students as owners of their own learning and instructional resources for one another In addition to ensuring that pupils understand what they are expected to achieve, it is argued that they need to be enabled to have responsibility for their own learning and to learn strategies and skills needed to identify their learning needs and judge their success in achieving desired learning outcomes. With regard to the identification of learning needs, a popular strategy is to distribute ‘traffic light’ cards which pupils can hold up to indicate their level of understanding (green for ‘I can do this’, amber for ‘I am reasonably confident’, red for ‘I need assistance’). The following anonymous practical adaptation was posted on a
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website for teaching ideas (http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/more/management/ trafficlightselfassessment.htm): In Maths we use a traffic lights system. At the end of each lesson the children draw a circle and write:
• • •
G (green light – understand this very well), O (amber light) – need a bit of support but understand the basics or . . . R (red light – help I don’t understand).
When I mark the books and feedback to the children or parents it is really useful to know how they feel about the topic and helps me target children more effectively in class. If the letters G, O, R are written rather than coloured it means the children’s assessment is still visible if the work is photocopied. In AfL pupils are also involved in marking their own work and that of their peers using agreed success criteria. Skills in self assessment can be more difficult to acquire than skills in peer assessment, so attention is usually given to developing the latter first. To develop peer and self assessment in the classroom, it is recommended that teachers plan peer and self assessment opportunities in lessons for pairs or small groups of children and train pupils over time to assess their own work and the work of others and to provide constructive, supportive feedback to their response partners (DfES 2004b). Activity 8.2
No hands-up
During 2007 articles appeared in popular newspapers responding critically to a DfES publication on pupils who fall behind in Key Stage 2. This was based on a survey of 39 schools. In the Daily Mail on 1 June 2007 an article appeared entitled ‘Why teachers “should stop pupils raising their hands” ’. Ministers were reported as saying that teachers should stop asking pupils to put their hands up to answer questions in class. It was argued this practice disadvantages quiet and retiring pupils. Instead teachers were advised to choose children to respond to questions so that the keener ones who always put their hands up do not get all the attention. In addition, it was reported that teachers were advised to give 30 seconds of ‘thinking time’ before expecting pupils to answer their questions. Asking the children to discuss a question in pairs before answering was also suggested. Many struggling pupils were said to try to avoid attracting the teacher’s attention. Other ‘invisible children’ were described who were ‘on the comfort zone’ or anxious about being seen to get things wrong. Their work was neat and they were generally well behaved, but they were not being stretched by whole-class teaching of the traditional kind. A spokesman from the Education Department was reported as insisting it was not ‘banning’ hands-up in class and ‘would categorically never prescribe what teachers do in their own classrooms’. In fact the official publication did not actually contain any advice to teachers about stopping pupils raising their hands. What was recommended was the introduction or revision of AfL policy in schools. Why do you think a ‘no hands-up’ strategy might be advocated as a suitable tactic in AfL? If you were going to explain the strategy to parents so that they could appreciate its place in an overall assessment policy, how would you go about it?
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Assessment in context Supporting teacher development of AfL There is evidence of a substantial need to support teacher development in this area. The conclusion that formative assessment is not well understood by teachers and is weak in practice comes both from Ofsted reports and from research studies. For example, Ofsted (2003b: 4) makes the following observations: Although all schools set numerical targets at the end of Key Stage 2, many still do not set effective curricular targets that focus on what pupils still need to learn, which are then followed through into teaching. Even where the targets focus on pupils’ weaknesses, teachers’ planning seldom refers to what they are going to do to tackle the weaknesses or how they will monitor progress against the targets. Clarke (2003) reported that teachers tended to focus in their planning on the activities they would provide for pupils, as opposed to the learning they intended to result from these activities – to the extent that they sometimes responded to questions about learning intentions with descriptions of learning activities. While changes to marking practices are sometimes constrained by school policies, Mavrommatis (1997) found that in primary classrooms in Greece teachers persisted in giving grades on written work after this policy had been statutorily discontinued. Parent and pupils expectations, together with pragmatic constraints of time and class size, were cited as reasons. However Wiliam et al. (2004) have shown that it is possible to provide a feasible professional development programme that can enable teachers to implement AfL in secondary schools in a way that results in educationally significant improvements in summative pupil assessments, such as end-of-key-stage tests. The starting point for this study was that significant changes in practice were unlikely to be produced by a set of ‘tips from the research’ too specific to be applicable across a range of subjects and classes. On the other hand, general principles were considered unlikely to be taken up by most teachers where they were left alone with the daunting task of translating the principles into everyday practice in busy classrooms. Instead the researchers provided a series of wholeday and half-day training sessions over a period of 16 months, which introduced the teachers to the principles of AfL and provided supported opportunities to develop action plans and share experiences and outcomes over time. In addition, researchers visited schools to make classroom observations and discuss ideas with the teachers about how their action plans were being put into practice. The research design authentically involved each of the 12 headteachers making their own decision about which two teachers to involve and each teacher deciding which class to involve in the intervention. Teachers were also free to decide which elements to incorporate into their action plans and, as can be seen from Table 8.2, there was considerable variability in this. Use was made of whatever outcome measures each school normally administered or had available. However, the researchers also sought to incorporate aspects of experimental design that would allow meaningful comparative data to be generated from which some valid generalizations could be drawn. Describing their approach as ‘local design’, the researchers identified a comparison class for each intervention class and treated each of the teachers involved as their own case study, analysing the results obtained from the pairs of classes. Comparison classes could be parallel
Assessment for learning Table 8.2
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Frequencies of activities in the lesson plans of 24 teachers
Category
Activity
Frequency
Questioning
Teacher questioning Pupils writing questions Existing assessment: pre-tests Pupils asking questions Comment-only marking Existing assessment: re-timing Group work: test review Course work: marking criteria Course work: examples Start of lesson; making aim clear Start of lesson: setting targets End of lesson: teacher’s review End of lesson: pupils’ review Group work; explanation Involving classroom assessment Self-assessment: traffic lights Self-assessment: targets Group work: test review Self-assessment: other Pupil peer-assessment Group work: revision Including parents Posters Presentations
11 8 4 4 6 4 4 5 4 4 1 1 4 2 2 11 5 6 7 5 1 1 1 1 102
Feedback
Sharing criteria with learners
Self-assessment
General
Total
Source: Wiliam et al. (2004).
classes taught by the same or different teachers or historical data could be used in making comparisons with similar classes taught the previous year. Clearly the variables controlled for are different with different comparison groups. A parallel class taught by the same teacher controls both for teacher effects and factors impacting on all classes in a school during the intervention. Historical data from a similar class could control for aspects of the former factor, but not the latter. Data from a parallel class taught by a different teacher could control for other factors impacting on the school during the intervention, but not teacher factors. This study illustrates that the complexities of real-world research are no excuse for abandoning the effort to apply a rigorous approach. Overall this study reported a mean effect size of 0.32 which the authors interpreted by equating it to approximately one-half of a GCSE grade per student per subject. While acknowledging that this might sound small, the authors point out that it would be sufficient, if replicated across a whole school (admittedly a big
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Assessment in context ‘if’), to raise the performance of a school at the 25th percentile of achievement nationally into the upper half. Of the 25 teacher level comparisons made, only four effect sizes were negative. Data from classroom observations provided some support for attributing the effects on attainment to the quality of AfL. While the study by Wiliam et al. (2004) is helpful in guiding the implementation of AfL and encouraging as to potential impacts, it also highlights variability in outcomes and associated factors such as quality of implementation. Pupil diversity is another potential source of variability and it receives a little specific attention in the guidance on AfL. Advice on pupils learning EAL is offered in one place in DfES (2004b: 43): During discussion, EAL learners may articulate their learning in their first language. Where appropriate, bilingual adults who share the children’s language have a vital role to play in assessing understanding. When this is not possible, discussion between children in their first language will still support learning. The whole-school training materials on AfL for secondary schools contain an alternative first unit (‘Assessment for Learning in Everyday Lessons’) for teachers of pupils who have SEN. However, differences do not extend beyond the video material and advice on modes of communication. It is stated that the essential elements of AfL are the same for all sectors of education, although the approach adopted will depend on individual pupils’ strengths and barriers to learning. The next section of this chapter will consider specific approaches for pupils with SEN, and the final section will look at some specific issues in AfL with pupils learning EAL.
Assessment for learning and pupils with SEN In their account of the Fuchs and Fuchs (1986) meta-analysis, which formed such an important part of the evidence base for their conclusions about AfL, Black and Wiliam (1998a) report some information about associations between pupil diversity and intervention impact. For example, most of the studies were focused on children with SEN and involved assessment activities carried out between twice and five times per week. With this level of implementation mean effect sizes were high overall, slightly higher for pupils with SEN (0.73) than for typically developing pupils (0.63). Of greater significance were the findings on variations in approach and intervention impact. In about half the studies, where teachers worked to clear procedures about interpreting the assessment data and taking action based on it, a large mean effect size of 0.92 was obtained. However, when these elements were left to the judgement of individual teachers the mean effect size was considerably smaller (0.42). In those studies where teachers used routine graphing of progress with the pupil to guide subsequent action higher mean effect sizes were obtained (0.70 as compared with 0.26). If pupils with SEN are to close any attainment gaps that exist between them and their typically developing peers it seems likely that the AfL approach being advocated for most pupils will need to be supplemented with more regular, highly specified and structured approaches. Precision teaching is an approach which incorporates the key features highlighted as leading to improved outcomes for
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pupils with SEN. It also is highly congruent with the basic principles and elements of AfL, as Table 8.3 illustrates. Table 8.3 also draws parallels between AfL and dynamic assessment, further information on which can be found in Chapter 12. Precision teaching is described in the next subsection. Introduction to precision teaching The confusingly named ‘precision teaching’ is not an approach to teaching but to assessment and monitoring. It offers a set of strategies for carrying out brief, focused, daily assessments of pupil performance and for recording progress in a way that enables decisions about its appropriateness to be made on a very regular basis (typically weekly). In precision teaching the teacher records how quickly a child can respond to questions as well as whether or not the answers are correct. Thus precision teaching focuses on fluency as well as accuracy. Binder (1993) reviews evidence suggesting that establishing fluency in addition to accuracy is of great value. If a skill is well practised so that we can perform it without hesitation, we are less likely to forget it, are more likely to be able to perform it reliably in distracting or demanding situations and are better able to apply it flexibly in a range of contexts. This can be appreciated by comparing the gear-changing skill of a learner driver and an experienced driver. The experienced driver gives little conscious attention to changing gear, is unlikely to stall when the unexpected happens and quickly adapts to driving an unfamiliar car. When fluency is established as well as accuracy there are improvements in pupils’ resistance to distraction when using a skill that they have learned, in their memory for and maintenance of the skill over time, and in their ability to generalize the skill and use it appropriately in a variety of circumstances. Lindsley (1992) reports that rate of response or fluency measures (e.g. number of words read correctly per minute) are very much more sensitive to changes in environmental conditions or drug dosages than are accuracy measures (such as percentage correct). He also reports that involving the pupils themselves in daily Table 8.3
Comparison of components across assessment approaches.
Formative assessment
Precision teaching
Dynamic assessment
Establish prior learning
Pre-teaching probe
Establish learning intentions
Target skill
Discuss success criteria
Criteria
Pre-test (assessing performance without help) Mediation of goal seeking, setting Mediation of goal seeking, setting Mediation of goal monitoring
Highlight gap between current Precise feedback on gap and intended levels between performance and criteria (verbal and visual) Provide feedback on closing Precise feedback on the gap improvement (verbal and visual)
Source: Gavine et al. (2006).
Mediation of feelings of competence
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Assessment in context assessment, marking and charting of performance increases the effectiveness of learning and their motivation. By training pupils to work together in pairs, the time that needs to be spent by the teacher on the mechanics of monitoring can be greatly reduced. Precision teaching involves five steps: 1
Specify the desired pupil performance in observable, measurable terms.
2
Sample and record the performance on a daily basis.
3
Chart the performance on a daily basis.
4
Record the teaching approaches in relation to pupil performance.
5
Analyse the data to determine whether: (a) the programme is satisfactory; (b) changes are needed in the teaching approach.
Merbitz et al. (2004b) note that the motto of precision teaching is ‘The learner is always right’ – underlining the concept that it is what the learner does that informs and guides teacher action. Precision teaching: a case-study example Claire is 7 years 3 months. Her class teacher, Mrs Wallace, has been becoming more concerned about her reading during the autumn term. She is in a reading group with five other children who were all behind at the end of Year 1. Whereas the other children in her reading group have been making steady progress and catching up on the group above, Claire seems almost to be going backwards and becoming more hesitant and less confident in her reading. At Step 1 the desired pupil performance must be stated clearly. The target level of fluency or success criterion will often be identified by averaging the scores of two or three pupils who are performing at an expected level for their age or who are making satisfactory progress. In this case Claire and the two pupils from her reading group who are making best progress were asked to read for a minute from Claire’s reading book. The number of words per minute they each read correctly and incorrectly was recorded. The scores of the other two pupils were averaged to produce the following objective, or statement of desired pupil performance, for Claire: Claire will read aloud from her reading book at a rate of 70 words correct per minute with no more than five errors. At Step 2 the child’s accuracy and rate of performance in the area being targeted are sampled on a daily basis using a short test that typically lasts for a minute. This allows the teacher to monitor progress towards the objective that has been set. The short test is called a ‘probe’ and can take a number of different forms. A probe designed to monitor performance on a programme to develop sight vocabulary in reading might consist of a grid containing the ten new words being learned that week presented seven or eight times each in random order. However, probes can also be taken directly from learning resources used in class. Deno (1985) reviews extensive research indicating the reliability and validity of
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1
Select a passage which the pupil will read during their next session and make a photocopy for yourself.
2
Say to the pupil: ‘When I say “start”, begin reading aloud at the top of this page. Try to read each word. If you wait for a word too long, I’ll tell you the word. You can skip words that you don’t know. At the end of one minute, I’ll say, “stop”.’ (Give pupil 3 seconds before supplying words.)
3
Turn on the stopwatch as you say ‘Start’.
4
Follow along on your copy, circling with a pencil words that were read incorrectly (omissions, substitutions, mispronunciations, insertions).
5
At one minute, say, ‘stop’ and turn off the stopwatch.
6
Place a slash after the last word read.
7
Count the number of words correct and the number of errors.
8
Involve the pupil in recording both correct and incorrect scores on a graph.
9
Repeat steps 1–8 at least three times per week. A different passage can be selected each day as the pupil progresses through the book.
Figure 8.3
Administering a probe from a pupil’s classroom reading text
using extracts from the books being read by the child in their classroom reading programme as probes. Deno reports that the number of words per minute read correctly and incorrectly from reading scheme readers (using the kind of procedure shown in Figure 8.3) reliably and validly discriminates growth in reading proficiency through the primary school years. So it seems that Mrs Wallace made a good choice in selecting this kind of probe for Claire. Deno reports that his data show a close relationship between the number of words read aloud from the text in one minute and measures of pupil comprehension, but he does advise teachers that specific checks should also be made on children’s comprehension. So this will be one of a number of aspects of Claire’s literacy skills that Mrs Wallace will continue to address using the same approaches she uses for all the children. It is only Claire’s progress on the specific reading accuracy and fluency objective that will be monitored using the precision teaching approach. Similarly, Claire will continue to participate in the same literacy programme as other members of her group while receiving some additional input focused on her specific reading accuracy and fluency objective. Typically a pupil would receive an additional 10–15 minutes per day structured teaching, with two of those minutes being devoted to assessment of progress using the probe and graphing at Step 3. Figure 8.4 illustrates the central role of graphing in this precision teaching approach with individual pupils. The number of words read correctly each day is charted with a dot and the number read incorrectly is charted with a cross. Techniques devised by White and Haring (1980) are used to make decisions about whether progress is satisfactory or when a change in the child’s programme should be made. Initially, Claire read 37 words correctly and 8 incorrectly per
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Assessment in context
Figure 8.4
Precision teaching (‘reading book’) chart
Source: Adapted from Deno and Fuchs (1987).
minute. The two classmates from her reading group averaged 70 words read correctly and 5 words incorrectly. It was decided to aim to help Claire achieve this rate by the end of the spring term. An aim line was drawn by Mrs Wallace to help her monitor the rate of progress being made and decide whether or not it was on track. An IEP was drawn up and a specific teaching programme focusing on key phonic skills was devised. This was to be implemented by a learning support assistant during the Literacy Hour. A set of probes was developed to monitor Claire’s progress in learning the phonic skills taught each week and the results plotted on her ‘sounds chart’ showed that the progress being made was very good. However, looking at Claire’s ‘reading book chart’ (Figure 8.4) it can be seen that while some progress was made using this first instructional strategy her performance was quite variable. Nevertheless, the programme was applied consistently until the point in early February when Claire’s performance had been below the aim line for four consecutive days. Fuchs et al. (1993) advised that if four consecutive scores fall below the aim line a change in the pupil’s programme should be introduced to try to increase their rate of progress. Mrs Wallace planned the introduction of the second intervention. This involved, in addition to the session with the learning support assistant, a computer game which provided speeded practice in applying phonics skills to text. Claire was absent on Monday 11 February when this programme was due to start, as can be seen in Figure 8.4 by the break in the line joining the daily dots and crosses. Claire initially responded very well to the introduction of the computer program, but after the half-term break she did not do so well when left to use the program on her own. A further adjustment in her programme was required. Mrs Wallace
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included the second lowest performing pupil in Claire’s reading group in the ten-minute daily computer session, after which the learning support assistant administered the probe with Claire. In addition, both Mrs Wallace and the learning support assistant made a point of reminding both pupils to apply the skills being practised in the computer sessions in their other reading activities. Three weeks after the implementation of the third instructional strategy Claire attained her objective for the first time. The probe was administered and Claire’s performance charted until the target rate of words correct and incorrect had been achieved for three consecutive days. Mrs Wallace planned to continue the programme after Easter for the first few weeks of the new term, as performance typically shows a decline following a break of this kind. If Claire did not reach her objective by the target date, Mrs Wallace would have to decide whether to extend it. If steady progress was being made which could not be accelerated despite a variety of programme modifications then it would be likely that the initial target was too ambitious and that an extension to the time period was necessary. Alternatively, a less ambitious programme with smaller steps and a more modest target could be developed. This example illustrates precision teaching’s sensitivity to progress and indicates the way in which it can directly inform teaching decisions. It illustrates that the onus is on the teacher to find a strategy that works, and it can provide a very clear indication of the level and type of additional resources that a particular pupil requires to learn successfully. It also indicates how some meaningful norm referencing can be achieved. This is likely to take on particular significance in assessing children from minority ethnic groups in that a particular child’s reading performance could be referenced against that of classmates having the same first language and similar educational histories. Precision teaching: issues in implementation Although the approach has a basis in behavioural psychology, Lindsley (1992: 52) argues that precision teaching is compatible with a wide range of curricular approaches, ‘except those so anti-structure that they cannot permit a counter, timer or chart in the classroom’. The extent to which precision teaching is used by educational psychologists and teachers in Britain has waxed and waned over the years. In the 1980s many articles were published describing applications of the approach (Booth and Jay 1981; Raybould and Solity 1982; Williams and Muncey 1982; Booth and Jewell 1983; Jewell and Feiler 1985; Goddard 1988). Kessissoglou and Farrell (1995) observed that very few studies were published in British journals in the early 1990s, although continuing active interest had been apparent in American journals. However it now appears that this may simply have been a slowing in the pace of publications on a topic that was no longer, of itself, considered novel. Publications on the use of precision teaching in British mainstream schools have continued to appear at intervals on a range of subject areas: spelling (Brooks 1995); maths (Chiesa and Robertson 2000); and reading (Downer 2007). Recent studies have also recorded positive results across a wide range of SEN groups: traumatic brain injury (Chapman et al. 2005); autism (Kerr et al. 2003); and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (McDowell and Keenan 2001). In Hasbrouck et al. (1999) a US teacher discusses frankly some of her initial concerns upon being introduced to a CBA approach and outlines her reasons for
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Assessment in context becoming committed to it. Initially she had taken it up reluctantly when the school district in which she worked made it a requirement that all special education teachers had to use CBA and graphing three times per week. One concern related to increased accountability where the graphs would offer concrete documentation of the effects of her teaching on the progress of those pupils with SEN with whom she was working. There was also an expectation that pupil’s CBA graphs would be shared with parents, other teachers and the headteacher in informing decision making about the pupil. Ainscow (1988) suggested that teachers may find it difficult to organize the implementation of the approach in large-class situations, and teachers in Hasbrouck et al.’s (1999) study reported that implementing CBA did reduce instructional time. However, they considered that the resulting greater efficiency in the use of instructional time outweighed the relatively minor cost in time and paperwork. They also identified the following specific advantages:
•
The graphed results provide a powerful communication tool and evidence of positive progress – for teachers, pupils and parents.
•
When progress is not being made teachers are alerted to this at once and can prepare to implement a programme modification to address the problem.
•
The success of a programme change can be quickly evaluated.
Feasibility of implementation of precision teaching is assisted by the availability of resources on the internet to support all stages of the process (see Merbitz et al. 2004a). For example:
•
www.johnandgwyn.co.uk provides an Excel spreadsheet that randomly generates from the first line a whole probe for sight word recognition, number bonds or phonics targets. It is well used by educational psychologists in the UK.
•
www.aimchart.net is run by Charles Merbitz of the Illinois Institute of Technology. It allows teachers to set up pupils on the system with passwords so they can enter their own data which can be seen and/or accessed by the teacher and other authorized people (e.g. parents) as appropriate.
Hasbrouck et al. (1999) also describe the implementation of precision teaching on a school-wide basis. In the autumn term all pupils are assessed three times on unpractised age-appropriate reading passages and the median score is used as a baseline for comparison with a second assessment in the spring to see if the pupils are benefiting from the school’s reading programme. Any pupils identified as being at risk of reading failure are assessed using weekly CBA measures, and graphs are kept of their progress. CBA only tells a teacher that the progress is not satisfactory, not why. An analysis of the processes being used and errors made by the pupil is then undertaken and the information used to design adaptations for the pupil. Sometimes the intervention may be as simple as a change in seating arrangements in the classroom to reduce distractions. At other times 5–10 minutes daily on focused practice of a targeted skill with a learning support assistant may be needed, or the teaching session may need to be organized so that the teacher can spend a few minutes with the pupil previewing or reviewing the content of a lesson.
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Ainscow (1988) also suggested that a focus on analysing specific tasks for individual pupils may result in a narrowing of perspective so that insufficient attention is given to other important contextual factors that may be impeding learning – related, for example, to the curriculum in general, classroom organization or interpersonal relationships. These potential dangers appear much reduced when CBA approaches, such as precision teaching, are implemented in the broader context of a whole-class focus on AfL.
Assessment for learning and pupils learning EAL The Cummins quadrant When children are learning EAL there is also often a need to adapt learning tasks and sequences in order to facilitate their access. Figure 8.5 shows a two-dimensional model developed from the work of Cummins (1984) into an assessment framework by Desforges and Kerr (1984) and working groups of educational psychologists at University College London (Cline and Frederickson 1996; Frederickson and Cline 1990). In this framework the horizontal dimension is used to indicate the degree of contextual support that is provided. At the context embedded end of the dimension language would be embedded within a meaningful context and gesture or expression cues would be likely to be present. On the other hand, at the context reduced end of the dimension the only cues to meaning would be linguistic ones. To provide a concrete example: if the child was asked to read the sentence ‘Tom went to the shop’ presented to them as one of the sentences in a sentence reading test, this would be an example of the use of written language in a context reduced situation. On the other hand, if the child was asked to read the same sentence just after it had been written by the teacher to the child’s dictation under a picture which they had drawn of their brother, Tom, then this
Figure 8.5
Cummins’ (1984) two-dimensional model of language proficiency
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Assessment in context would be an example of written language use embedded within a context that was meaningful to the child. The vertical dimension indicates the level of cognitive demand placed upon the child by language used in any particular task or situation. Cummins regards cognitive demand as depending on both external and internal factors. External factors refer to those such as task complexity – where one could agree, for example, that addition is an easier and less complex mathematical operation than multiplication. Internal factors refer to the familiarity and acceptability of the task to the child as well as the child’s current proficiency. This highlights the point that tasks which are relatively cognitively undemanding for a native speaker of English may be highly cognitively demanding for a second language learner. This model therefore attempts to incorporate knowledge of what the child brings to the learning situation over and above their entry skills on the task in question. As Desforges and Kerr (1984) pointed out, the model also suggests how classroom activities may be modified in a way which maximizes the access of bilingual children to the curriculum. Typically, if a child is experiencing difficulty with a particular activity the teacher may respond by making that activity easier – that is, by reducing the level of cognitive demand. However, second language learners may well be able to cope with the cognitive complexity of the task but simply not yet have developed the language skills necessary for access. To reduce the complexity of tasks in this situation would result in the children being provided with inappropriately easy work which does not stretch them intellectually. The use of the Cummins quadrant is recommended in government guidelines (DfES 2006a) on planning for children learning EAL. In conducting AfL it can also be helpful to locate on the matrix those tasks where the child is able to succeed and those tasks where success cannot yet be achieved. It is then possible to build up a picture of the child’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of the level of cognitive demand they can handle with confidence in particular curriculum areas, and to establish the level of contextual and other support required for success in a range of different situations. Cline and Frederickson (1996) provide accounts of the use of the model in primary and secondary schools by a range of education service professionals with bilingual children working in a variety of community languages, including British Sign Language. The general conclusion is that it is an attractively simple as well as versatile model. However, a number of potential limitations have been identified. The most obvious of these is the assumption that the cognitive and contextual dimensions are distinct and readily separable. In observing and analysing classroom tasks, instructions and performances it has sometimes proved difficult to disentangle the ‘cognitive’ fully from the ‘contextual’. In some cases, movement along the contextual dimensions has actually been represented on the model as a diagonal shift, as it was found in practice that making tasks or instructions more context embedded also made them somewhat less cognitively demanding. Similarly, changes in cognitive demand may result in tasks actually being presented which are embedded in context to a greater or lesser degree. It is also important to remind ourselves of what the framework does not do:
•
It does not analyse the child’s cognitive strategies (e.g. preference for rote learning) or learning style (e.g. preference for working independently).
Assessment for learning
•
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It does not provide the teacher with the information about the child’s cultural background that is required to ‘embed’ the task.
Thus, ironically, the framework can only be meaningful for the teacher when it, too, is ‘context embedded’ – that is, the teacher is clear about the aims of the lesson, knows the child’s background well and has tried to match the task to the child’s learning style and interest. Solity (1993) had expressed concern that the classifications offered for determining task difficulty (cognitively demanding/undemanding and context embedded/reduced), and the way these are related to the cultural background of children make assumptions and predictions about children’s learning which may create differential expectations based on ethnicity. While this is always a danger, the approach encourages teachers to consider for each pupil how their language proficiencies and their familiarity with particular materials and tasks may interact with the planned curriculum activities to increase or decrease the level of difficulty of these activities. The ultimate effect, therefore, should not be to create differential stereotypical expectations based on ethnicity, but to encourage those working with children in a classroom to be sensitive to the individual differences that are associated with linguistic and cultural diversity. At worst, stereotypical underexpectation of children from minority linguistic and ethnic groups will lead teachers to substitute less cognitively demanding tasks (moving vertically down in the framework) if difficulties are encountered, as is suggested by a traditional approach to task analysis. With this approach teachers are encouraged first to move horizontally (left across the model) to ascertain whether the child is able to demonstrate success when given greater contextual support to their developing proficiency in English. In this way the model based on the Cummins framework offers a new dimension to the CBA of bilingual children. Using the Cummins quadrant in differential assessment This section describes the use of the Cummins framework approach to CBA in addressing a key question in working with bilingual children for whom the language of instruction is not their preferred language: when does poor learning performance indicate a special need and when does it indicate a need for further support in learning the language of instruction? This decision between the identification of learning needs and language needs is often fraught with difficult political and ethical considerations. If it is mistakenly decided that a child has a learning need then the child may be provided with insufficiently challenging learning experiences and be subject to inappropriately low expectations. Decision errors of this type may also lay the professional involved open to charges of racism or of employing culturally biased assessment procedures. However, difficulties are also created by mistaken decisions that a child has a language rather than a learning need. In this case the child is likely to receive a language support programme to which they cannot respond because its pace is too fast and it is structured in learning steps which are too large. In subsequent assessment, therefore, they will continue to present as having language needs, so it may be several years before it is finally recognized that their difficulties with learning language are not responsible for their slow academic progress but that problems in both areas reflect general learning difficulties. Maintaining the
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Assessment in context ‘language difficulties’ hypothesis until the evidence for ‘learning difficulties’ becomes overwhelming avoids the political pitfalls for professionals outlined above. However, it can present serious ethical problems if the children concerned do not receive the special learning support they need. The CBA framework can be used to structure diverse assessment information, aiding its analysis and interpretation. Essentially the approach involves using the Cummins framework to map the tasks at which the child can succeed and those which they are unable to do. For the latter, further assessment involves increasing the level of contextual support as a first step. This may entail increasing nonverbal cues (such as those gained from demonstration) to support the verbal message. Learning experiences may also be contextually embedded by supplementing the language of tuition with explanation or examples in the child’s preferred language. Figures 8.6 and 8.7 provide schematic snapshots of the kinds of profile which may be interpreted as indicating learning and language needs, respectively. Figure 8.6 shows a profile indicative of a child with learning needs. Providing increasing degrees of contextual embedding does not assist the child in achieving success. However, reducing the cognitive demand of the task (i.e. making it easier) does allow the child to succeed. By contrast, Figure 8.7 shows a profile indicative of a child with language of instruction support needs, for whom increasing degrees of contextual embedding allow success to be achieved. Typically, however, those bilingual children who have learning needs will also present with language needs because their general learning difficulties will also affect their learning of the language of instruction – at least their acquisition of cognitive academic aspects of language proficiency. Hence, Figure 8.8 shows a profile likely to be indicative of a
Figure 8.6
A child with learning needs
Source: Rogers and Pratten (1996).
Assessment for learning
Figure 8.7
A child with language of instruction support needs
Source: Rogers and Pratten (1996).
Figure 8.8
A bilingual child with learning needs
Source: Rogers & Pratten (1996).
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Assessment in context bilingual child who has learning needs. For these children to achieve success they will need to be provided both with tasks at an appropriate level of difficulty in respect of their learning needs and with tasks which are appropriately contextually embedded in respect of their language needs. This points to the importance of learning and language specialists working effectively together.
Activity 8.3
Differential assessment case studies
Read the following case studies (from Rogers and Pratten 1996) of children referred for advice to an integrated LEA support service. (a) For each child use a copy of the CBA framework to map the tasks which the child can and cannot do. (b) Decide whether there is a closer match with Figure 8.6, indicating a learning need, or with Figure 8.7, indicating a language need.
Case study A A 6-year-old boy from a Gujarati-speaking family who has no preschool educational experience. Reason for referral: to establish whether the child has learning difficulties that require formal assessment. Current targets:
• • •
naming different rooms in the home; three initial letter sounds to be taught; drawing and naming shapes.
The baseline is that the child only knows the initial letter sound ‘a’. In the Cummins framework these targets would be cognitively demanding and not context embedded. Working with the class teacher, the bilingual support teacher observed that the theme in the lessons was all about the home. The bilingual support teacher provided an activity book with acetate peeling stick drawings. This was used as the medium to provide context embedded experiences for the child to name the objects and to make him aware of the initial letter sounds. In English, the bilingual support teacher found that the child did not know the word ‘cooker’. In Gujarati, the bilingual support teacher found that the child identified the item from the question ‘Where does your mum cook?’. Only when she had made a home visit did the bilingual support teacher discover that the family used the word ‘gas’ to describe their cooking appliance. Many families would associate the word ‘cooker’ with a pressure cooker rather than a stove or range. In discussion with the mother, the bilingual support teacher now uses vocabulary used within the home setting. The work of teaching the initial letter sounds was reinforced at home by the mother using games such as ‘I Spy’. Having context-embedded the material appropriate to the culture and environment, the bilingual support teacher was able to demonstrate that this child’s rate of learning was such that he did not require formal assessment. The child was able to identify the common shapes found within his own home, name the different rooms and initial letter sounds, and therefore it was demonstrated that he did not have a significant learning difficulty.
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Case study B An 11-year-old boy from a Punjabi-speaking family. Reason for referral: learning difficulties in the first year of secondary school. Previous experience: early schooling in India. Language of instruction: Hindi. Dropped out of school because of learning and behavioural difficulties. Mother remarried a Gujarati-speaking husband and the family came to England. The child had not spoken English before he was 11 years old. A bilingual teacher initially worked both in Hindi and Punjabi to establish the following targets. Current targets:
• • •
to write first name; to develop work recognition skills; to use common nouns in English.
The last target was addressed first. Initially the child was taught solely in Hindi. Through stories from his own experience the bilingual support teacher introduced a basic vocabulary in English. After the teaching sessions it was demonstrated that the boy was capable of learning, though at a much slower rate than his peers even with a high level of contextual embedding. Use of the Cummins grid in this case indicated that it was not possible to ensure the child’s success with an ageappropriate learning task simply by moving horizontally across the framework and providing more contextual support. Rather it was necessary first to move vertically down the framework in identifying easier small steps to the target. In addition, it was still found necessary to ensure that these easier tasks were well embedded in context.
Conclusions In this chapter we have examined approaches to assessment that are focused on the teaching programme. In these approaches the outputs of the assessment process are changes to the content and/or delivery of teaching programme so that it enhances learner engagement and achievement. Prior research in the use of curriculum-based assessment with children who have SEN has provided an important basis for the current emphasis on AfL in the UK as an approach of key importance in raising attainment for all children. The core strategies of AfL were described and issues in teacher training and implementation discussed. Questions were raised about the need for more structured and intensive AfL strategies to be used with children who have SEN and one such strategy (precision teaching), which has a strong evidence base, was described in detail. The chapter concluded by suggesting ways in which the Cummins quadrant might be used to enhance AfL for pupils learning EAL.
9 Learning environments
Objectives When you have studied this chapter you should be able to:
• • •
explain the reasons why a greater emphasis has been placed in recent years on assessing the learning environment; outline different theoretical models of the learning environment; describe the strengths and limitations of commonly used methods for assessing learning environments and designing interventions.
Contents Introduction
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Influences from legislation Influences from research
The learning environment: theory and practice
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Theoretical models of the influence of the learning environment The gap between theory and current practice
Methods for assessing learning environments and designing interventions
• • • • •
Observational measures Pupil perceptual measures Multi-perspective measures Qualitative ethnographic assessment methods Soft systems methodology
Conclusions
Introduction In Chapter 6, four distinctive approaches to the assessment of SEN were outlined: assessment focused on the learner, assessment focused on the teaching programme, assessment focused on the zone of potential development, and assessment focused on the learning environment. This chapter is devoted to assessment focused on the learning environment. Ainscow and Tweddle (1988: 18) wrote: ‘In the 1960s we were preoccupied with analysing the individual child; in the 1970s
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the emphasis was switched to analysing tasks within the curriculum; and now we believe we should be focusing on the learning environment.’ It has been suggested that there are a number of advantages in focusing on ‘at-risk school environments’ rather than ‘at-risk’ students (Waxman 1992). Definitions of the at-risk student tend to focus on student characteristics, such as poverty, drug abuse, sexual activity, race, ethnicity, SEN, and first language other than English. There are concerns that this could be stigmatizing and may produce the ‘Matthew effect’. The Matthew effect, a biblical reference, involves the rich getting richer and the poor poorer – or in this case, those who start off with advantages in learning making above average progress and those who start off with lower achievements than their peers falling ever further behind. There are a number of ways in which this effect might be magnified. For example, if Shama starts the year behind her peers in maths, her maths teacher may expect less of her, give her easier work or less of it and only call on her to answer low-level questions in class. These strategies effectively restrict Shama’s learning opportunities and she falls further behind her peers who are being given a broader range of more challenging opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills. Waxman (1992) argued that it would be more productive to identify those ‘at-risk’ school environments that:
• • • •
alienate students and teachers;
• • •
are unresponsive to students;
provide low standards and a low quality of education; have differential expectations for students; have high numbers failing to leave school with a minimum level of qualifications; have high rates of truancy and disciplinary problems; do not adequately prepare students for the future.
This kind of emphasis is apparent in the approach to school inspection introduced in Britain in the 1990s. A system of regular independent inspection of all schools was implemented with the purpose of reporting on the quality of education provided by the school, the educational standards achieved, the efficient management of financial resources and the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils (Department for Education (DfE) 1992). The law relating to school inspections has since been revised. Where a school is considered to be failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education it can be placed in ‘special measures’ or, if it has demonstrated the capacity to improve, given a notice to improve. These are essentially ‘at-risk’ designations and schools are required to produce an action plan to address the matters raised in the inspection report. The local education authority is expected to comment on the school’s action plan and to outline the steps it proposes to take to support the school which will be subject to termly monitor visits by Ofsted and a further inspection. The focus on these ‘at-risk’ schools has steadily intensified, as is illustrated by the following quotation from The Guardian newspaper on 28 September 2007: Andrew Adonis, the schools minister, said: ‘Over the last decade there has been an unrelenting focus on raising standards.
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Assessment in context ‘We have seen significant improvements in results since then . . . But we must press on and reduce even further the numbers of weak and failing schools. ‘Our reforms to turn around failing schools demand radical action from the school and local authority. A school in special measures has to turn round in 12 months, otherwise the school could face closure.’ A number of other influences which have contributed to increasing interest in the learning environment can be identified, both from legislation and from research. These are discussed next. Influences from legislation In the past, SEN legislation focused exclusively on disabilities within the child. Over the last 20 years more attention has been given to the learning environments of pupils who have SEN. Section 323 of the Education Act 1996 defined SEN in terms of the interrelationship between a child’s learning difficulty and the educational support which they are receiving: ‘A child has special educational needs if they have a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made for them’. The Code of Practice on the identification and assessment of pupils with SEN (DfES 2001a) goes further. Rather than simply recognizing that the learning environment will have an influence and should be considered, the revised guidance requires the assessment of pupils who have SEN to include assessment of their learning environment. Likewise in devising interventions, changes to features of the learning environment should be considered (2001a, para. 5.6): The assessment process should always be fourfold. It should focus on the child’s learning characteristics, the learning environment that the school is providing for the child, the task and the teaching style. It should be recognised that some difficulties in learning may be caused or exacerbated by the school’s learning environment or adult/child relationships. This means looking carefully at such matters as classroom organisation, teaching materials, teaching style and differentiation in order to decide how these can be developed so that the child is enabled to learn effectively. Other guidance and training documents also place emphasis on the importance of attending to the learning environment. DfES (2005e) provided training materials to assist staff identify key factors in the environment which help to promote behaviour for learning. Four categories of factors that make up the learning environment are suggested:
•
Physical – the layout of the school and classroom, its facilities and the resources children use.
•
Relationships – how people in the school behave towards each other, care about and look after one another.
•
Structures and expectations – expectations we hold about children’s behaviour, and the school and classroom rules and routines.
•
Language and communication – the way that relationships, structures and
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expectations are manifested through verbal and non-verbal communication in the school. In the guidance provided by the DfES (2006e) on using the learning environment as a tool for learning, particular emphasis is placed on the first of these aspects, the physical environment. It is argued that the physical environment has a significant influence on learning through the messages it gives children about the extent to which they and their learning are valued. Later in this chapter we will be looking more closely at the conclusions of available research on the effects of the learning environment on academic and social outcomes. The DfES (2006e) guidance places emphasis on the role of the learning environment in supporting independence in learning. For example, the concept of ‘working walls’ is advocated, which shifts the use of some classroom wall space from its traditional use for displaying completed work produced by the children. Instead working walls are used by the teacher to support learning of literacy or numeracy targets on which the children are currently working. This involves prominently displaying the curricular target and success criteria, together with modelled examples showing the steps in the learning sequence and providing the relevant vocabulary. Influences from research School effectiveness research School effectiveness research has had a major impact in education over the last 25 years. Prior to that there was a widespread belief that ‘schools make no difference’. However, researchers in this area are now expressing the view that ‘we have been instrumental in creating a quite widespread, popular view that schools do not just make a difference, but that they make all the difference’ (Reynolds 1995: 13). In fact, Reynolds reports that only 8–15 per cent of the variance in pupil outcomes is usually found to be due to school and classroom factors – which are not therefore as influential as family and community factors. However, the influence of school factors is big enough to make the difference between educational success and failure for many pupils. From a review of school effectiveness research between 1979 and 2002, Rutter and Maughn (2002) report that the following factors have been found to be associated with school effectiveness:
•
Contextual features – balanced intake in terms of pupil characteristics. It is also suggested that community support, political support and adequate resources (which have been less systematically studied) may also be important.
•
School organization and management – good leadership that provides strategic vision, staff participation with a shared vision and goals, appropriate rewards for collegial collaborative working, attendance to staff needs and rewards, and effective home–school partnership.
•
School ethos – an orderly atmosphere, an attractive working environment, appropriate well-conveyed high expectations, the involvement of pupils in taking responsibility, positive rewards with feedback and clear fair discipline,
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Assessment in context positive models of good teacher behaviour, a focus on achievement and good behaviour, and good teacher–pupil relationships in and outside the classroom.
•
Effective monitoring – regular measurement of pupil performance across a range of domains, appropriate assessment of teacher efficiency, and the evaluation of overall school performance in relation to a range of indices.
•
Group management in the classroom – efficient organization of lessons (or non-classroom activities), clarity of purpose, and appropriately structured lessons.
•
Pedagogic qualities – good engagement of pupil interest, effective classroom teaching, maximization of learning time, good subject knowledge by the teacher, encouragement of independent work by pupils, and appropriate parental involvement in children’s learning.
While these broad generalizations are well established, it must be acknowledged that because many of the study designs are correlational, it is not possible to establish whether a causal relationship exists such that developing these attributes would actually lead to enhanced pupil achievement (Griffith 2003). A number of other questions about research in this area remain:
• •
How consistent is school performance across different outcome measures? Are schools equally effective for all pupils or subgroups?
In relation to the first of these questions there appears to be considerable variation. Mortimore et al. (1988) found that those junior schools that came out high on academic effectiveness were not necessarily high on social effectiveness and vice versa. School differences in emotional/behavioural outcomes were less marked than variations in academic attainments. Rutter and Maughn (2002) drew similar conclusions for adolescents from a range of studies that examined outcomes including interest in learning, non-attendance, delinquency, drug use, psychological stress/well-being and self-confidence. However, there is also some evidence of associations with broader social outcomes. For example, Ainley (2006) found that an engaging school climate, whether identified as such by pupils or teachers, was related to students regarding social outcomes connected to interdependence as being important to them in their lives. It is hypothesized that developing a sense of connectedness to others in the school community is part of the process of developing a sense of interdependence with others in a broader social community. In relation to the second question (are schools equally effective for all pupils or subgroups?), Nuttall et al. (1989) argued that there can be different school effects for children of different ethnic groups, ability ranges and gender within the same school. Using examination performance at 16 years as the outcome measure, a study conducted over three years revealed substantial differences between boys and girls, pupils of high and low attainment on entry to secondary school and pupils of Caribbean backgrounds, as opposed to those from English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish backgrounds. Doubts were raised about the meaningfulness of the concept of overall effectiveness and it was suggested that it may be more meaningful to describe differences between schools for different subgroups. This also seems to be the case in some primary schools. In a research study conducted by
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Mortimore et al. (1988) in London primary schools, gender differences in reading progress were compared. It was found that most schools were equally effective, or ineffective, in promoting the reading progress of boys and girls. However, in 30 per cent of schools differences were found, two-thirds showing positive effects for boys but negative effects for girls. Semmel et al. (1994) reported results from a longitudinal school effectiveness project focusing on primary and secondary schools in California. There was no evidence that schools that did well in terms of general academic achievement also did well with regard to the academic performance, self-esteem or school adjustment of pupils with SEN. Indeed, in primary schools a significant negative relationship was found between the reading performance on state assessments of a school’s pupils with SEN and school-wide reading achievement. The authors suggest that pressures on these schools to increase academic standards under conditions of reducing resources may have led to the development of strategies to improve reading performance overall which had a negative impact on the reading progress of pupils with SEN. The influence of class size on pupil outcomes is an aspect of the learning environment which has been much debated. Rutter and Maughn (2002) concluded that variations within the 25–35 range make little difference, possibly because teaching and classroom management style tend to be similar within this range. However, Nye and Hedges (2000) reported that very small classes (8–15 pupils) may be beneficial, especially for younger children, children with special needs and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The classroom learning environment Reynolds (1997) identified the study of classroom or instructional processes as a gap in current British research on school effectiveness. Criticisms of a lack of intersection between school and classroom level effectiveness research were levelled by researchers in the USA at the research base in that country (Bickel 1999). This is an important area for further work as many studies show that a great majority of the variance between pupils is due to factors at the classroom level, not the school level (Rutter and Maughn 2002). There is a substantial literature which demonstrates that characteristics of the classroom learning environment account for appreciable amounts of variance in a number of important outcome measures such as examination results, standardized test scores, inquiry skills, school attendance, attitudes, interest and anxiety (Fraser 1986). Haertel et al. (1981) conducted a meta-analysis of data from 12 studies involving 17,805 students in 823 classes across four countries and reported that better achievement was consistently found in classes perceived as having greater cohesiveness, satisfaction and goal direction, and less disorganization and friction. While it is acknowledged that much research has still to be done in this area, other researchers too have reported results which suggest that student attitude as well as student achievement might be improved by creating classroom environments with more of these positive features (Fraser et al. 1989; Burden and Fraser 1993). An important aspect of research on classroom environments is its international and cross-cultural character. For example, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement classroom environment study
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Assessment in context (Anderson et al. 1989) was conducted in eight countries: Australia, Canada, Hungary, Israel, Korea, the Netherlands, Nigeria and Thailand. This promotes confidence in the cross-cultural applicability of consistently emerging findings. However, to date much of the research has been descriptive or correlational in nature. Waxman and Huang (1996) highlighted the need for longitudinal and, especially, experimental studies which would be important in informing intervention. Urging researchers to examine specifically how aspects of the classroom learning environment can be changed in order to serve a protective function for pupils in at-risk school and community settings, they also argued for the importance of examining the data for differential effects of pupil characteristics such as sex, ethnicity and age. Figure 9.1 shows the classroom-level variables which affect learning that were identified from a literature review conducted by McKee and Witt (1990). It should be noted that this review focuses on studies carried out with general populations A. Physical setting of the classroom 1
Classroom design, furniture arrangement, seating positions
2
Spatial density and crowding
3
Noise and lighting
B. Classroom organization and management 1
Teacher’s classroom management skills
• • 2
‘With-itness’; overlapping; signal continuity; momentum Group alerting and accountability in lessons
Procedures for establishing effective management
• • •
Rules and procedures for everyday classroom life Procedures for student accountability Managing inappropriate behaviour
C. Quantity and quality of instruction 1
Quantity or amount of instruction
• • 2
Allocated time; engaged time Time spent on tasks on which students have high success rate
Quality of instruction
• • • • •
Daily review and checking of homework Presentation of material to be learned Arrangements for guided student practice Feedback and correctives on students’ performance Independent practice; periodic reviews
Figure 9.1
Classroom variables which affect children’s learning
Source: Based on a literature review by McKee and Witt (1990).
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of schoolchildren, rather than those with SEN. It cannot be assumed that the same variables will have equal salience for different groups of children. For example, Rossmiller (1982, cited in Berliner 1987) found that ‘engaged time’ had a different significance for high- and low-achieving pupils. Engaged time is the amount of classroom time during which pupils are engaged with instructional tasks. In this study, engaged time accounted for 10 per cent of the variance in reading and maths achievement for high-achieving pupils but, in the case of low-achieving pupils the percentage of variance accounted for was 73 per cent. There is some further support for the view that the learning environment may play a different and relatively more important role in the educational progress of children with special needs as compared to their mainstream peers. Table 9.1 reports the findings from Kaufman et al.’s (1985) extensive evaluation of a major reintegration programme for primary-aged children with moderate learning difficulty (MLD) in Texas. What emerges most strongly is the greater importance for both pupils with special needs and their mainstream peers of a focus on environmental as opposed to individual variables. There is evidence that pupils with learning difficulties are treated differently by teachers. However, this is not always advantageous for them. Slate and Saudargas (1987) found that teachers were more likely to leave pupils with learning difficulties alone when they were engaged in academic work than when they were engaged in other activities. On the other hand, teachers were more likely to interact with students with learning difficulties when they were out of their seats or interacting with other children. Teachers’ differential attention to off-task behaviour was only found with pupils who had learning difficulties, not with their classmates. Alves and Gottlieb (1986) found that teachers directed fewer academic questions and less extended feedback towards pupils who have learning difficulties, although teachers did interact with them more frequently overall than they did with other pupils. The authors suggested that this evidence of lower academic input may reflect perceptions on the part of the teachers that Table 9.1 Percentage of variance in academic achievement and anti-social behaviour attributable to individual and environmental variables for mainstream and integrated MLD pupils Type of variable (%)
Academic achievement Antisocial behaviour
Learner background (individual, family, home)
Environmental (classroom composition, socioemotional climate, instructional conditions)
Integrated MLD pupils Mainstream pupils
13
27
33
45
Integrated MLD pupils Mainstream pupils
5
28
11
21
Source: Kaufman et al. (1985).
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Assessment in context socialization, rather than academic learning, represents the primary goal of mainstreaming for pupils who have learning difficulties. Cooper and Valli (1996: 156) argued that a very different approach is in fact required: ‘classroom organization for poor children of color and for children with learning difficulties must account for individual and cultural differences in knowledge construction by providing well-scaffolded, culturally responsive and socially mediated instructional activities’. Thus, those reporting and commenting on research have supported Table 9.2
Features of the school physical environment and effects on pupil outcomes Attainment
Engagement Affect
Improvement of environmental element leads to improvement
Light (daylight) Build quality (pathways and positive outdoor space)
Low ceilings (pupil cooperation vs. perceptions of crowding) Colour (contrast walls) Storage (open shelves, more time on task)
‘Beautiful’ spaces High ceilings (teacher satisfaction) Display (pupil selfesteem)
Equivocal evidence
Room arrangement (depending on goal of lesson/ interaction)
Ergonomic furniture Noise (learned helplessness) Temperature, ventilation, air quality (distraction of air conditioning) Desk arrangement
Colour Lighting Noise (mood) Build quality (renovation)
Poor quality environmental elements have detrimental effect
Air quality Air quality Noise Noise Safe, healthy surrounding
Source: Woolner et al. (2007).
Attendance
Wellbeing
Temperature, Ergonomic furniture ventilation, air quality (disputed) Build quality (ownership vs. shortterm ‘wow’ factor) Lighting (disputed)
Air quality Noise Safe, healthy (context dependent) surroundings Overall build quality
Air quality (esp. asthma) Storage (open shelves, dust, allergens) Lighting (eyestrain, headaches) ICT (lighting, posture)
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the official guidance emphasizing the importance of the learning environment of a child who has (or may have) SEN. There has been a recent increase in interest in physical features of classroom environments in the UK. This relates to the announcement of a significant schools building programme ‘to create world-class, 21st century schools – environments which will inspire learning for decades to come and provide exceptional assets for the whole community’ (Building Schools for the Future 2004). Woolner et al. (2007) note that when government ministers discuss this development their comments often seem to imply that the effect of the physical environment of the school on pupil learning is obvious. However, as can be seen from Table 9.2, available empirical evidence is indicative rather than conclusive on many features of the physical environment. One feature that has been well researched is the arrangement of desks. When individual assignments are to be completed, rows as opposed to groups of desks are found to increase time on task (Wheldall et al. 1981). The effect has been found to be particularly marked for pupils with SEN (Wheldall and Lam 1987). Of course not all classroom activities may be facilitated by desks in rows – whole-class discussion and group work may benefit from a different arrangement. Activity 9.1 presents an example of an innovative classroom design project undertaken by a Design Council Team with a school in Liverpool where the focus is on flexibility. Activity 9.1
Innovative design of the physical learning environment
In this activity you are asked to read the following information about an innovative classroom design project and to consider (and, where possible, debate with a colleague) the likely strengths and limitations of the new design as compared to the traditional classroom layout in the school which is shown in Figure 9.2.
Figure 9.2
A traditional classroom design
Source: Design Council (2005).
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This project was carried out by a Design Council team working with staff and pupils at St Margaret’s boys’ secondary school in Liverpool. Their starting point was the development of a brief for improvements to the learning environment that could raise boys’ achievement. They came up with a brief for a 360-degree flexible classroom. Figure 9.3 and the text below describe the classroom design produced by Forpeople (the design agency whose concept won the commission).
Figure 9.3
Innovative classroom design
Source: Design Council (2005).
The concept centres on the ‘heart’, a secure and mobile multimedia projection module at the centre of the room. The combined table/chair reduces the footprint of a traditional desk and chair, leaving space for the teacher to circulate around the ‘racetrack’ and so access each student individually. The flexibility of the table/chair means it can also be moved by the students to support individual, paired and group work, while the whiteboards around the walls can be removed (to reveal additional display space) and placed onto the tables to facilitate group work. The aluminium window blinds move individually to control light and air flow and can also be used as whiteboards to provide additional display and projection space, meaning that in the final plenary session of a lesson the teacher can refer to a vivid learning ‘trail’ that has been built up around the four walls. Finally, the ‘utility belt’ around the walls allows vital shared storage space. (Design Council 2005: 32)
The learning environment: theory and practice Theoretical models of the influence of the learning environment There have been a number of influences on the thinking about a systematic approach to the assessment of children’s learning environments, most notably Lewin’s (1936) field theory, Bandura’s (1977) concept of reciprocal determinism and Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecosystems approach. Lewin developed the formula B = f(P, E) to represent the idea that behaviour (B) was a function of personal characteristics (P), environmental factors (E) and the interaction between the two.
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Bandura hypothesized that behaviour was determined by reciprocal interactions, continuously occurring between behavioural, cognitive and environmental factors. Bronfenbrenner developed a systems model of the multiple influences on child development that was introduced in Chapter 5. From these theoretical approaches a number of specific models of the influence of the learning environment on pupil performance in school have been developed. Three of these will be described in more detail, one relating to each of these theoretical frameworks. The Project PRIME (Programmed Re-entry Into Mainstream Education) taxonomic model (Kaufman et al. 1985), some results from which are shown in Table 9.1, was developed to guide a major integration study in the USA. Paralleling Lewin’s formula, the desired outcome (or ‘output’), learner competence, was viewed as a function of the learner performing a specific role within an environment defined by a specific setting. It was represented mathematically by the equation C = f(Lr, Es), where C is competence, L is learner background, E is the environment, r stands for role and s stands for setting. The model analyses each term in the equation into subcomponents. For example, learner competence is further subdivided into academic competence and social competence. Learner background variables include: age, sex, socioeconomic status, IQ, attitudes and previous school experience. Aspects of the learning environment are considered under three headings: classroom composition (peer characteristics and teacher characteristics), socioemotional climate (teacher leadership and peer cohesiveness) and instructional conditions (content and teaching approaches). These were used in the study to analyse three types of learning environment: mainstream class, segregated special class and a resource base (part-time withdrawal). Irrespective of placement a similar profile of classroom environment features was associated with academic progress for pupils with SEN:
•
A classroom environment characterized by teacher directed and supervised activities calculated to actively involve the learner.
•
Instructional engagement which occurred as a result of teacher activity with the student: teacher querying and student response, supervision, monitoring, feedback.
•
Harmony within the classroom, which seemed to enhance peer exchanges, positive teacher–pupil interaction, increased attention to task, and the acceptance and assimilation of the learner with SEN into the regular classroom. Learning was optimized when non-handicapped and peers with SEN cooperated.
•
The teacher’s ability to create such a classroom environment was shown to be associated with their training and experience (Kaufmann et al. 1985: 360–1).
Figure 9.4 shows an updated version of Knoff’s (1984) ecomap applying Bronfenbrenner’s multi-approach. Originally Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) classic model focused on the inter-related real-life environmental contexts in which development occurs. However, over time, the model has been redefined as ‘bioecological’, rather than ‘ecological’ and the underlined elements in italics added. Bronfenbrenner explains these change as follows: For some years I harangued my colleagues for avoiding the study of development in real-life settings. No longer able to complain on that score, I have
Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model
Source: adapted from Knoff (1984).
Figure 9.4
204 Assessment in context
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found a new bete noir. In place of too much research on development ‘out of context’ we now have a surfeit of studies on ‘context without development’. (Bronfenbrenner, 1986, reported in Bronfenbrenner and Morris 2006) As a consequence the child (the biosystem) is now formally represented at the centre of the bioecological model. In addition, the chronosystem represents changes in all systems across time. Development is understood in terms of individual-level changes over time resulting from processes of interaction between the individual and the environments within which they are embedded. Ysseldyke and Christenson (2002) drew on the work of Bronfenbrenner in identifying features of the environment that provide support for learning in the microsystems of both home and school as well as at the mesosystem level of interaction between home and school. Three key types of feature were identified from a review of the literature as both amenable to intervention and important to pupil engagement and learning in school. The first set of features, which occurred in school, was described as indicating ‘instructional support’. Examples included instructional expectations, cognitive emphasis, motivational strategies and relevant practice in the classroom. The second set of features could be observed at home and was seen as indicating ‘home support’. Examples included the parents’ orientation towards discipline, their participation in their children’s learning and the ‘affective environment’ of the home. Finally, there was a set of features that spanned home and school (‘home–school support’). These included the sharing of standards and expectations, positive trusting relationships and cross-setting of learning opportunities. A full list may be found in Ysseldyke and Christenson (2002: 4). The influence of Bandura’s work, in particular on the role of self-efficacy, can be seen in the model developed by Patrick et al. (2007), which is shown in Figure 9.5. This is a model of ways in which classroom social environment factors can influence student engagement and performance. It was developed from research with Year 6 pupils in maths lessons in the USA. The study showed that engagement and, through engagement, achievement were influenced by individual pupil motivational factors (feelings of efficacy and focus on mastery). These motivational factors in turn were influenced by the extent to which pupils felt emotionally supported by their teacher, academically supported by their peers, and encouraged by their teacher to discuss their work. Task-related interaction, in the form of pupil discussions about maths, was related significantly to maths achievement, over and above their attainment in maths the previous year. This ‘value-added’ finding reflects the considerable literature on positive effects of pupil discussion on learning. The authors of this study caution against analyses of learning environments which focus solely on academic aspects and highlight the importance of also considering the impact on engagement and learning of the social context of the classroom. The gap between theory and current practice Many of the findings discussed so far have broad applications for developing school and classroom learning environments to benefit pupils generally. At the same time there are particularly important practical implications for assessment and intervention practice with pupils who have SEN. Ysseldyke and Christenson
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Assessment in context
Key: Classroom Social Environment Teacher emotional support – pupils’ perceptions that their teacher cares about and will help them. Promoting interaction – teacher encourages pupils to interact and exchange ideas with each other during lessons. Promoting mutual respect – perception that the teacher expects all pupils to value one another and their contributions, requires students to be considerate of others’ feelings, and prohibits students making fun of each other. Student academic support – pupils perceive support from their classmates with respect to their academic learning.
Mediating Motivational Beliefs Self-efficacy – individuals’ contextually specific judgements of their capabilities to perform tasks successfully. Individuals hold self-efficacy beliefs with respect to different domains, such as for academic subjects and social relationships. Mastery goals – this orientation involves a focus on personal improvement and gaining understanding or skill, with learning being seen as an end in itself.
Student Engagement Self-regulation strategies – these include planning, monitoring, and regulating cognition, and their use is a central aspect of self-regulated learning. Task-related interaction – includes suggesting ideas and approaches during whole-class lessons, explaining thoughts or reasoning and discussing alternatives with others during small-group activities, and sharing ideas or informally giving help during individual work.
Figure 9.5 Perceptions of the classroom social environment, motivational beliefs, engagement and attainment Source: adapted from Patrick et al. (2007)
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(1987: 20) urged teachers and educational psychologists to give more attention to environmental factors in their work with children who have SEN in order to improve outcomes: the purpose of any assessment is intervention. Since a student’s performance is a function of classroom variables, it is necessary to analyze the learning environment to design effective interventions. We believe that educators should not categorize or label a student without considering the role instructional factors play in the student’s learning difficulties. Both student characteristic data and learning environment data should be considered by child study team members engaging in educational and placement decisions. Similarly, Sattler (1988), in his classic text on assessment of children and young people, advocates environmental assessment as an important component of a comprehensive assessment and argues that it should be conducted before undertaking an individual assessment. However, the following quotations, taken from UK government-sponsored reports, highlight attention to the environment as an area of weakness in statements of SEN: Most of the Statements which we have seen in the course of our research concentrated their attention on deficits within the child which led to special needs, with very little attention given to the child’s environment, whether at home or at school. (Goacher et al. 1988) Statements generally identify provision in such vague terms that, contrary to the intention of the 1981 Act, they cannot guarantee a specific level of provision. (Audit Commission 1992) Activity 9.2 provides an opportunity to consider accounts of learning environments in statements of SEN. Activity 9.2 How useful are accounts of the learning environment in statements of SEN? These extracts are taken from a selection of statements of SEN. How useful do you think each of the accounts would be to parents, psychologists and future teachers of the children concerned?
Jonathan, aged 11 (specific learning difficulties in literacy) Educational advice ‘Reason for formal assessment’: Although Jonathan has been supported by the literacy support service for five terms at B centre and four terms at H school his progress has been extremely slow . . . ‘List strategies employed and outcomes achieved’: The literacy support service has employed a multi-sensory approach to reading, writing and spelling. He has received individual and small-group tuition on a regular basis. This has resulted in limited progress in literacy but considerable improvement in self-organization and in his attitude to coping with difficulties. In the classroom Jonathan’s programme of work is individualized with work supporting the literacy support programme.
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Assessment in context
Psychological advice ‘Relevant information about this child and the learning environment’: Jonathan has been supported by the literacy support service for five terms at B centre and four terms within H middle school.
Sharon, aged 10 (severe anaemia, problems of motor control, learning difficulties) Educational advice Sharon has been receiving support from a learning support assistant since September last year. The support has been either in class, helping her cope with instructions and develop some independence, or withdrawal support, going over curriculum content that Sharon has found difficult. She had use of a laptop computer and was given some instruction. The present programme of work is: (a) in close liaison with her class teacher, discussing objectives and targets, exploring the extent of her difficulties and planning future lessons; and (b) encouraging Sharon to talk about her work and explain what she has to do, and getting her to verbalize her ideas. The laptop computer was only a partial success as Sharon was only able to grasp and sequence the most simple of procedures. She was heavily dependent on the learning support assistant to check and print out her work. If she was to have this facility again, she would need a teacher to be trained and designated ‘on-site’ as an adviser, maintainer and print operator. (Support teacher) ‘Brief description of school organization and child’s place in it’: National Curriculum year 5 mixed ability class in the first year of middle school. ‘Has special attention already been provided in school, e.g. group teaching methods or remedial teaching in school or elsewhere?’: Work in all subjects needs modification to meet Sharon’s needs as she finds many concepts difficult to grasp even with extensive use of practical equipment. For example, she seemed unable to comprehend the idea of millilitres and litres even after considerable work with water and measuring equipment. (Class teacher, SEN coordinator, headteacher)
Psychological advice This advice refers to the learning support assistant support and to the provision of a laptop computer but gives no details or comment.
Adam, aged 8 (severe emotional and behavioural difficulties) Psychological advice (after a previous meeting) Mrs L, Adam’s class teacher, was advised to build on Adam’s strengths in class – for example, his organizational ability and desire to help. Efforts were to be made to continue to give him ‘important jobs’ to improve his self-esteem and status within the class. I gave Mrs L details of self-recording as a means of boosting selfesteem and to modify Adam’s behaviour. When a review was carried out a year later more concerns were being expressed about Adam’s academic progress rather than his disruptive behaviour. The SEN support service team was then involved in providing support. Four months later the situation had deteriorated considerably and Mr R, the headteacher, requested 25 hours’ welfare assistance per week for Adam, as his attention-seeking behaviour was felt to be detrimental
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to the rest of the class. (I assessed Adam in school.) I observed him in class during a session where children share their ‘treasures’ with their teacher; when called out to show his valued object, he stood in front of Mrs L with his back to the children, physically blocking their access to the teacher. He was determined to have Mrs L’s attention and was not interested in sharing with his peers. I subsequently recommended Adam for attendance at the school D learning support department. Fortunately a place was available and he started almost at once. He also had psychotherapy involvement increased from one to two sessions per week. Although progress was made in the unit (e.g. in settling to simple tasks on his own), Adam still found it difficult to share. He continued to have considerable difficulties in the mainstream classes in school D. I reviewed Adam’s progress six months later. In the classroom, I noted that Adam would only work under the close supervision of his teacher. She had to physically sit at his table in order to keep him on task. At a meeting in school it was accepted that while Adam was calmer in school, his emotional needs were still such that he required a great deal of attention to stay on task, more than could be provided within the resources of a mainstream school.
The existence of a gap between theory and practice was also identified by McKee and Witt (1990: 821) who suggested ‘There exists in school psychology a lack of congruence between, on the one hand, our data-based assumptions and beliefs concerning the importance of the environment, and on the other hand, our practice where environmental variables are seldom seriously considered for the purpose of designing interventions’. These authors went on to suggest that this discrepancy between educational psychologists’ beliefs and behaviours may relate to two different sets of problems:
•
Social and political problems: related to entering the teacher’s domain and presuming to have the right and knowledge to target instructional variables for assessment/intervention.
•
Technical problems: related to lack of knowledge about what to assess, how to assess it and how to communicate the information to teachers in a way that is helpful and enabling.
The next section of this chapter provides information, in relation to the second point, on measures of the classroom learning environment. These have proved to be of value to educational psychologists in supporting greater involvement in prevention and early intervention, offering consultation and systems-based approaches (Burden and Fraser 1993). The importance of such approaches is highlighted by current moves to reform services for children which require ‘consideration of the complex interaction among environmental influences in multiple contexts, those in which children learn and develop’ (Reschley et al. 2007: 148).
Methods for assessing learning environments and designing interventions Frederickson and Cline (1995) identified the three most commonly used strategies as follows: (i) direct observation; (ii) investigating pupils’ perceptions (e.g. through questionnaires); and (iii) investigating teachers’ perceptions. Other
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Assessment in context approaches are: (iv) investigating parents’ perceptions; (v) investigating the perceptions of support staff in the classroom; (vi) examining work completed by pupils and discussing it with them and with their teachers; and (vii) examining teachers’ written lesson records. Frederickson and Cline (1995) suggested that one perspective alone would provide a limited view and that exploring a number of perspectives on the learning environment would be more informative and valid. Fraser (1987), who has been very influential in developing pupil perception measures, acknowledged that the richest information about the classroom environment is likely to come from the use of both observational and student perceptual data, rather than from the use of either technique alone. Waxman et al. (1997: 57) also advise on the desirability of a multi-method approach: ‘In order to capture all the processes and nuances that occur in classrooms, educators should use triangulation procedures to collect data from multiple perspectives’. They suggested using multiple measures of classroom processes, together with student and teacher self-report survey and interview data in addition to more qualitative ethnographic data from field notes. This section examines in turn the following approaches: observational measures, pupil perceptual measures, multi-perspective measures and qualitative ethnographic assessment methods. Finally, we will take a more detailed look at a methodology derived from systems theory that has been applied to issues in SEN by educational psychologists and teachers in Britain.
Observational measures Frederickson and Cline (1995) summarized the relative advantages of observation as a method as follows:
•
It is a very effective way to gather detailed information directly about how a child is interacting with the whole environment – teacher, peers, learning materials.
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Observation makes it possible to examine the teacher’s expectations of the target child – in practice rather than theory.
•
One can collect verbatim records of what the teacher, the target child and other children actually say to each other.
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A variety of structured techniques are available which allow detailed ‘objective’ information to be obtained which will assist in interpreting ‘high inference’ output such as individuals’ accounts of how they see things.
•
It is possible to analyse patterns across several situations – what is offered and the child’s response to it.
It is important also to bear in mind some potential limitations of observational techniques. For example, there is a possibility that the very presence of an observer may affect the behaviour of teachers and pupils. This can result in reactive effects such as socially desirable responding. As observations are conducted for limited time periods it is also important to consider whether the periods used are sufficient to obtain a reliable and valid sample of the interaction(s) of interest. The collection of data may be time-consuming. Isolated incidents may be
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focused on, without properly considering the preceding and subsequent events that may provide information about context and meaning. Many observational techniques have been developed with the purpose of conducting research on features of classrooms and classroom processes – see Good and Brophy (2008) for details of a range of methods and guidance on the use and interpretation of classroom observations. In this subsection we focus on observational approaches that can be used to assess the learning environment of a pupil who has SEN with the purpose of designing appropriate interventions. The Classroom Observation Schedule (COS), developed by Waxman et al. (1988; see also Waxman and Padron 2004) is a systematic observation schedule which is designed to record pupil behaviours with reference to a number of aspects of classroom learning environments:
•
pupil interactions with teachers and/or peers and the purpose of these interactions;
• • •
the settings in which observed behaviours occur; the types of material with which pupils are working; the specific types of activity in which they engage.
The COS has six headings: 1
Interaction: describes the type and purpose of any interaction a pupil may have with other pupils, the teacher or support staff.
2
Selection of activity: identifies who has decided that a pupil will be working on a particular assignment during the observation period.
3
Activity types: possibilities here include watching or listening, working on written assignments and social interaction.
4
Setting: identifies the grouping arrangements.
5
Manner: describes the pupil’s behaviour in relation to the classroom context and activities being observed.
6
Language used: identifies the language(s) which the pupil is using for oral and written communication.
The COS, which has been published in Britain (Frederickson and Monsen 1999), has been used in primary and secondary schools in the USA, most notably as one of the key instruments in a five-year research programme being conducted by the National Research Center on Education in the Inner Cities. In a number of studies the COS has been used to examine the classroom instruction and learning environment in effective and ineffective schools in the USA, for pupils generally and for African-American pupils in particular (Waxman and Huang 1997; Waxman et al. 1997). Waxman and Huang (1997: 10) argued that ‘one of our most serious educational problems continues to be the underachievement of African-American students in urban schools’ and reviewed research that suggested the importance of effective classroom learning environments in enabling African-American and other students at risk of failure to achieve success in school.
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Assessment in context Waxman (1995) describes the use of the COS in a formative way to provide feedback to school staff and stimulate discussion about improvements. Observations were carried out across a whole school district and Table 9.3 shows an example of the profiles fed back to schools, allowing each school to compare their mean percentages on each category with the averages across the district. The profiles were considered at staff meetings and their implications discussed. In the case of the example shown in Table 9.3, Waxman reported that teachers’ concern focused on the amount of time their pupils spent watching or listening (61 per cent), particularly as it was above the district average (53 per cent), and they discussed strategies for raising the amount of active pupil engagement in lessons. Table 9.3 A
COS example feedback profile for a primary school
Interactions
Variables
Your school mean (%)
All primary schools aggregated mean (%)
1 No interaction/independence 2,3,4 Interaction with teacher 5 Interaction with support staff 6,7 Interaction with other students 8 Interaction with others
52.73 39.07 0.00 8.08 0.10
59.48 33.40 0.02 7.06 0.01
B and C Variables
Activity selection and types Your school mean (%)
B1 Teacher-assigned activity 99.76 B2 Student-selected activity 0.23 C1 Working on written assignments 9.52 C2, C3 Interacting 5.00 C4 Watching or listening 60.83 C5 Reading 3.45 C6 Getting/returning materials 1.90 C7 Colouring, drawing, painting, 1.07 etc. C9 Working with manipulative 10.83 materials/equipment C12 Presenting/acting 1.42 C13 Tutoring peers 0.00 C14 Not attending to task 3.33 C16 Other 4.04
All primary schools aggregated mean (%) 99.85 0.34 19.55 6.74 53.03 8.82 2.77 0.46 4.55 0.78 0.18 4.08 3.21
Note: More than one activity may be coded during one observation.
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Setting
Variables
Your school mean (%)
All primary schools aggregated mean (%)
1 Whole class 2 Small group 4 Individual
80.23 13.09 6.66
78.19 12.20 9.60
Variables
Your school mean (%)
All primary schools aggregated mean (%)
1 2 3 4 5
95.11 0.23 2.97 1.19 0.47
94.48 0.30 3.45 0.84 0.90
E
Manner
On task Waiting for teacher Distracted Disruptive Other
Source: Waxman (1995).
The COS can also be used to monitor or evaluate the effectiveness of interventions or the effects of other changes by comparing differences between the percentage observations recorded in particular categories before and after the change was introduced. Particular teachers or groups of teachers may be interested in comparing the characteristics of the classroom environment they provide across different subjects (primary) or different groups of pupils (secondary). Teachers and schools may be interested in examining the data for any differences linked to gender, ethnicity or SEN. Waxman (1995) argued that many teachers, even those with substantial experience, are sometimes unaware of the nature of their interactions with individual pupils and that one of the most important purposes of systematic classroom observation is to improve teaching practice. There is growing evidence that feedback from systematic observations can be used to improve teaching (Stallings and Freiberg 1991). This may be particularly important where some groups of pupils are being treated differently. For example, many studies have reported gender differences in teacher–pupil interactions, with boys often receiving both more praise and more criticism in the classroom than girls (Good and Brophy 2008). Waxman (1995: 80) suggested that an important purpose for classroom observation is to investigate questions such as: ‘Are some pupils being treated differently in the classroom, and does that explain why some pupils learn more than others?’ The answers to such questions may have crucial policy implications for schools in raising the achievement of all pupils. A number of studies have provided information on the validity of the COS categories in differentiating between effective and ineffective schools (see Waxman and Padron 2004). For example, Waxman and Huang (1997) designed a study to examine the classroom instruction and learning environment in effective and ineffective schools for African-American pupils. The primary schools studied
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Assessment in context were in urban districts that had predominately African-American students from economically disadvantaged families. Schools were classified as effective or ineffective on the basis of pupil scores on state-wide assessments of academic skills. Four schools were randomly selected from those classified as effective and four from those classified as ineffective. The COS was used in 15 randomly selected classrooms in each school during reading or mathematics classes. The results of this study showed that pupils from the effective schools more often worked individually, whereas those from ineffective schools were taught as a whole class for a higher proportion of the time. Pupils from the effective schools also spent relatively more time interacting with their teacher and working on written assignments, while in ineffective schools more time was spent working with manipulative materials, reading and interacting with others. Although pupils in both types of school were on task for a very high proportion of the time (more than 90 per cent), the level of active involvement and intellectual demand was lower in the ineffective schools where a typical lesson would involve the teacher lecturing to the whole class and merely asking the pupils a few knowledge-type questions near the end of the lesson. Furthermore, students from the effective schools were observed interacting with their teacher almost twice as much as those from the ineffective schools. The findings of this study are consistent with a range of other findings from the literature:
•
that amount and quality of teacher–pupil academic interactions are two of the most important educational variables that promote student outcome (Wang et al. 1994);
•
that over-reliance on whole-class instruction is detrimental to student outcomes because teachers often have difficulty in maintaining an instructional pace that is appropriate to all (Walberg 1995).
In addition it is reported that small-group instruction and cooperative grouping are especially effective for pupils from minority groups and lead to improved pupil outcomes (Allyn and Boykin 1992; Walberg 1995). Thus the COS has been shown to identify dynamic influences in the classroom that are also revealed by other research methods. But all observation schedules have a degree of bias in that they concentrate on factors perceived to be important by their authors. Alternative classroom observation schedules with different emphases can be found in the Immediate Learning Environment Survey (ILES) (Pielstick 1987) and the Functional Assessment of Academic Behaviour (FAAB) (Ysseldyke and Christenson 2002). The ILES is a survey instrument which covers four broad domains: physical conditions; social conditions; instructional materials and procedures; and psychological/learning factors. The FAAB is designed to gather information relevant to a concern about the learning of an individual pupil, assessing instructional needs and supportive learning conditions with the purpose of designing interventions. Instruments are provided to support information collection through teacher, student interview and parent interview as well as classroom observation.
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Pupil perceptual measures Among the advantages of using pupil perceptual measures are the following:
•
There is evidence that they account for more variance in achievement than directly observed (low inference) variables (Fraser 1991).
•
They avoid giving inappropriate weight to events because of their frequency (quality or intensity may matter more than quantity).
•
They are based on pupil experiences over many lessons rather than being restricted, as observation normally is, to a small number which may be atypical.
•
With group methods the conclusions that are drawn are based on the pooled judgements of all pupils rather than data from a single (though trained) observer. With pooled judgements any individual biases are likely to cancel each other out.
•
They directly assess learner perceptions of events which are as likely to determine learner behaviour as the actual events, if not more likely. The classroom environment experienced by the student may be quite different from that which is observed or intended.
•
This method facilitates the direct comparison of pupil and teacher perceptions. Fraser (1984) reported that teachers tend to perceive their classrooms more favourably than their pupils.
•
Pupil perception measures respond to demands for accountability because information is obtained about the preferences and reactions of consumers.
•
They are more economical than observation techniques.
A number of potential limitations should also be kept in mind. The following were reported by a group of British educational psychologists (Frederickson and Cline 1995), from initial trialling of one measure that had been developed by Fraser. First, some children seemed puzzled by the apparent repetition of questions (very similar questions typically make up each scale). Second, the reading level was too high for some pupils. Although this was overcome successfully by reading the items aloud to the children, this made the whole process less clearly ‘private’ between the individual child and the page. Third, some of the language used proved problematic for some pupils with learning difficulties (e.g. the use of double negatives). Finally, some children expressed uncertainty about generalizing on some questions (e.g. in response to ‘In my class everybody is my friend’ some children indicated that they would have liked to have a midpoint between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in the response options). Fraser (1998) provided a review of available pupil perceptual measures and highlighted the strong theoretical influence on their development of the work of Moos (1973), who proposed that diverse psychosocial environments can be classified using three types of dimension: 1
Relationship dimensions which identify the nature and intensity of personal relationships, involvement and support within the environment.
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Assessment in context 2
Personal development dimensions which assess the directions along which personal growth and self-enhancement tend to occur.
3
Systems maintenance and systems change dimensions which refer to orderliness, maintenance of control and clarity of expectation.
The scales from the two measures described in detail in this subsection can all be classified according to Moos’s scheme (Fraser 1998). The two measures that have been selected are those that have been most used and are readily obtainable in Britain. They both involve short pupil questionnaires which are easily scored and summarized in a diagrammatic form which teachers find meaningful and useful. The My Class Inventory (MCI) is designed for primary-aged pupils, while the Individualized Classroom Environment Questionnaire (ICEQ) is designed for secondary-aged pupils and focuses in particular on aspects of the learning environment (e.g. individualization and differentiation) found to be particularly important in promoting the successful inclusion of pupils who have SEN (Madden and Slavin 1983). Both measures are completed by pupil and teacher participants in the learning environments that are assessed and include an ‘actual’ and a ‘preferred’ form. The actual form asks students to rate aspects of their current learning environment, while the preferred form asks how students would ideally like their learning environment to be. Item wording is almost identical in the actual and preferred forms. For example, the statement ‘Different students do different work’ in the actual form of the ICEQ is changed in the preferred form to ‘Different students would do different work’. The questionnaires can be administered on a wholeclass basis or individually to pupils and teachers. If there are concerns about the reading ability of members of the class it is acceptable for the teacher to read out the questions with time given for the children to mark their questionnaire. The short form MCI (MCI-SF) consists of five scales, each containing five items. The meanings of the scales are defined as follows:
•
Cohesiveness: the extent to which students know, help and are friendly towards each other.
• •
Friction: the extent of tension and quarrelling among students.
• •
Satisfaction: the extent to which students like their class.
Difficulty: the extent to which students experience difficulty with the work of the class. Competition: the extent to which students perceive an atmosphere of competition in a classroom (Fraser 1982; Fraser et al. 1982; Fraser and Fisher 1986).
On the MCI-SF the children answer each of the 25 questions by circling YES or NO. When both are used the actual and preferred forms of the questionnaire are usually completed on the same occasion, with the actual form being completed first. The MCI-SF has been shown to be as reliable and valid a measure of classroom environment as more time-intensive and costly measures, such as direct classroom observations (Fraser 1991). Wright et al. (1991) conducted a study in ten primary schools in Surrey from which they reported that the MCI
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discriminated significantly among the classrooms surveyed and was considered to be useful by the teachers and educational psychologists who participated in the research. From their study of primary mathematics classes in Singapore, Goh and Fraser (1998) reported better student outcomes when classrooms were perceived as having more cohesion and less friction – a predictable finding that tends to support claims for the validity of the instrument. The MCI has found a wide range of applications. These include a study of ways to improve instruction in multicultural classrooms (Diamantes 2002), an investigation of changes in pupil perceptions across the transition from primary to secondary school (Ferguson and Fraser 1999) and a number of studies focused on SEN and inclusion which are reviewed at the end of this section of the chapter. The ICEQ was developed by Rentoul and Fraser (1979) to measure how secondary-aged pupils’ perceptions of traditional classrooms differed from classrooms which included more inquiry-based and individualized approaches. Interest in these kinds of approaches originally came from research on investigator-based science curricula. Their importance has also been highlighted by research showing that pupils who have SEN tend to make better educational and social progress in integrated mainstream school placements, but only if a suitable individualized or differentiated educational programme is offered (Madden and Slavin 1983). Fraser (1987) suggested that the ICEQ can also be completed by the teachers of the groups of pupils being surveyed and differences in perceptions between pupils and teachers examined. The short form of the ICEQ was produced by Fraser and Fisher (1986) in response to research and teacher feedback that the original measure provided a very useful assessment of the classroom environment but was time-consuming to administer and score. The short form consists of 25 items, five items in each of five scales. The five scales are interpreted as follows (Rentoul and Fraser 1979): 1
Personalization: emphasis on opportunities for individual students to interact with the teacher and on concern for the personal welfare and social growth of the individual.
2
Participation: extent to which students are encouraged to participate rather than be passive listeners.
3
Independence: extent to which students are allowed to make decisions and have control over their own learning and behaviour.
4
Investigation: emphasis on the skills and processes of inquiry and their use in problem solving and investigation.
5
Differentiation: emphasis on the selective treatment of students on the basis of ability, learning style, interests and rate of working.
Lim (1995) conducted a study using the ICEQ with students aged 15–16 years attending nine secondary schools in Singapore. As in most studies a gap was found between students’ ratings of their preferred and actual classroom environments, with more positive and favourable ratings being given to the preferred environment. Fraser (1982) reports that a similar gap is also found in teachers’ ratings of their preferred and actual classroom environments. In addition, teachers tend to rate the actual classroom environment more positively than the pupils. Lim found
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Assessment in context that in schools achieving better GCSE results, students generally viewed their actual classroom environment as having greater emphasis on personalization, independence and differentiation. Reliability studies in Australia (Fraser and Fisher 1983b) and England (Burden and Fraser 1993) have reported similar satisfactory data for the ICEQ. There is good evidence for the validity of the ICEQ as a measure of classroom climate. Wheldall et al. (1999) found only a small component of school-level influence and a relatively large component of class-level influence on ICEQ scores. The instrument has been used in research on aspects of the classroom learning environment associated with self concept as a learner and ‘deep’ approaches to learning (which focus on meaning and understanding, as opposed to ‘surface’ approaches that focus on memorizing and getting by in tests). Dart et al. (1999) found that classroom learning environments which were perceived to be high on personalization, participation and investigation were associated with deep approaches to learning. High personalization was also associated with high self concept as a learner. A valuable practical feature of the ICEQ and the MCI is that they are intervention orientated. Pupil perceptions of both their actual and preferred classroom environments can be assessed in order to identify discrepancies and assist teachers in implementing strategies aimed at reducing them. Fraser and Fisher (1983a) reported person–environment fit research which suggested that students achieve better results when the classroom environment closely matches their preferred environment. Activity 9.3 provides an illustration of the way in which assessment information from these measures can be used as a basis for reflection, discussion and systematic attempts to improve classroom environments.
Activity 9.3
Case study: use of the ICEQ in a secondary school
Fraser (1987) described a study involving a class of 31 boys aged 12–13 years who were studying English, maths and history with the same teacher. As you read about the study consider these questions: (a) What interventions might be worth trying to increase personalization and participation? (b) Can you think of any situations in your work where an assessment/intervention approach like this using the ICEQ would be useful? The following steps were taken: 1
Assessment: administration of the actual and preferred forms of the ICEQSF.
2
Feedback: to the teacher of a profile showing the discrepancy between the actual and preferred class mean scores on each of the five scales. See Figure 9.6, where the ‘pre-test’ line shows the discrepancy between the actual and preferred class mean scores on each of the five scales of the ICEQ before the intervention.
3
Reflection and discussion: as a result of which the teacher decided to introduce an intervention aimed at increasing the levels of personalization and participation.
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Figure 9.6 Profiles plotted pre- and post-intervention to show the discrepancy between pupils’ preferred and actual classroom learning environment Source: Fraser (1987).
4
Intervention: over the course of a month the teacher attempted to increase personalization by moving around the classroom more, making a conscious effort to praise students and demonstrate an interest in them. The organization of more group work and the reduction in teacher as opposed to student talk were the strategies adopted in an attempt to increase participation.
5
Reassessment: the actual form was readministered. The ‘post-test’ line in Figure 9.6 shows the scores after the intervention. The differences between the pre- and post-assessments suggested (and statistical tests confirmed) that success had been achieved in reducing the actual– preferred discrepancy, specifically in the aspects of the classroom environment that had been targeted by the teacher’s intervention strategies.
Burden and Fraser (1993) pointed out that as the feedback to teachers comes from the students themselves its impact is likely to be considerably greater than if it was provided by a detached observer. They described, as a development of this process, a case study where desired changes were discussed with a class of secondary school pupils and they were involved in the design and implementation of changes. Reassessment four weeks later indicated significant reductions in the preferred/actual discrepancy on four of the five scales. Pupil perceptual measures can also be used to investigate whether pupils with SEN, those of different genders and those from different ethnic or cultural groups perceive their classroom environment differently and are affected in different ways by particular intervention approaches. Some initial research suggests that these might be relevant questions to address. Knight (1991) reported differences between African-American and Hispanic students in their perceptions of their classroom environment in the USA. In the UK, Frederickson and Furnham
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Assessment in context (1998b) used the MCI among other measures to assess the extent to which environmental factors and individual characteristics each contributed to the social inclusion and peer group acceptance in mainstream classes of pupils who had MLD. They found that both sets of factors made an important contribution. In particular, the perceived cohesiveness of the classroom peer group, as assessed by the MCI, had a significant effect both in supporting inclusion and preventing rejection. In a study of 30 classrooms in Swedish schools using scales adapted from the MCI, Westling Allodi (2002) found that classes containing a pupil with disabilities were higher on cohesiveness and lower on friction and competitiveness than other classrooms. Levels of friction and competitiveness were also lower in culturally heterogeneous classrooms. The authors suggest that diversity might be associated with processes that heighten acceptance and respect for difference. However, other factors, such as teacher attitude, might also be implicated. An investigation of New Zealand teachers’ attitudes to inclusion also reported differences on the MCI (Monsen and Frederickson 2004). Classes taught by teachers with more positive attitudes to inclusion of children with SEN reported higher levels of satisfaction and lower levels of friction than classes taught by teachers whose attitudes were less positive. One question that arises about pupil perception measures of the classroom learning environment concerns the extent to which pupil perceptions are influenced by their individual characteristics, as opposed to characteristics of the classroom. Walker and Plomin (2006) reported data on 3,020 pairs of 9-year-old identical and fraternal twins (part of the Twins Early Development Study). A classroom environment questionnaire was analysed to estimate the genetic influence, the shared environmental influence and the non-shared environmental influence. They found that non-shared environment explained the majority of the variance in scores, whereas shared environment made almost no contribution. So even when identical twins shared the same home and class contexts, they perceived their classroom experiences in distinctive ways. However, genetics was found to play a modest role in mediating children’s perceptions of their classroom environment. Walker and Plomin (2006) point out that this finding, essentially that identical twins consistently perceived their classroom characteristics more similarly than fraternal twins, was open to several possible interpretations. For example, it may result from genetic influence on personal characteristics that affect perception. Alternatively, it may be that the greater physical and behavioural similarity of identical twins may elicit more similar responses from teachers and peers. Multi-perspective measures A number of measures are available which collect information on the classroom learning environment from more than one source. The Student Classroom Environment Measure (SCEM), the Teacher Classroom Environment Measure (TCEM) and the Observer Classroom Environment Measure (OCEM) are three related measures developed by Midgley et al. (1991) which draw on the three most commonly used sources of information about classroom learning environments. These measures have the advantage that published data are available on their psychometric properties and interrelationships (Frederickson and Monsen
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1999). They have been used to study the transition from primary to secondary school, so the SCEM is appropriate to older primary as well as secondary-aged pupils. It consists of nine scales, grouped into three dimensions. The relationship dimension contains the Involvement, Affiliation and Teacher Support scales; the personal growth/goal orientation dimension contains the Task Orientation and Competition scales; and the system maintenance and change dimension contains the Order and Organisation, Rule Clarity, Teacher Control and Innovation scales. In a study of secondary school pupils in New Zealand, Anderson et al. (2004) found that positive interactions among students, as assessed by the Affiliation scale, were positively associated with teacher ratings of participation and with a measure of task completion. The TCEM and OCEM can be used by teachers and observers working across the primary and secondary age range. The TCEM is designed to sample teachers’ perceptions of their general teaching and marking practices, discipline techniques, reward strategies, opportunities for student autonomy and cooperative interaction in the classroom. The OCEM is designed to sample observers’ perceptions of aspects of task organization within the classroom, opportunities for student input, competition, cooperation and interaction among students, teacher fairness and friendliness and informal relations between teacher and students. The FAAB (Ysseldyke and Christenson 2002) provides schedules to assist in collecting information through classroom observation and structured teacher, pupil and parent interview. An Instructional Environment Checklist is also provided to assist in prioritizing and planning interventions to meet pupils’ needs, to enlist home support for these and to facilitate effective home–school collaboration. Qualitative ethnographic assessment methods Fraser (1998) highlighted the desirability of including both qualitative and quantitative strategies in the evaluation of learning environments. Used along with quantitative strategies, qualitative strategies can provide contextual information which assists in the interpretation of quantitative data and can help to generate hypotheses about influences and relationships in the situation. Fraser described the use of interpretative research methods involving classroom observation, interviewing of students and teachers, the construction of case studies, use of student diaries and analysis of students’ written work. Observation can also be used to collect quantitative data (as we have seen) and observation, interviewing and diary analysis can be used, albeit differently, in qualitative and ethnographic studies. What mainly distinguishes an ethnographic study is its purpose, described by Uzzell (1995: 303) as ‘cultural description’. An attempt is made to understand and describe the situation from the perspectives of the participants. The focus is not on the researchers’ questions or theories but on those elements which guide the actions of the participants in the environments under study. Ruiz (1995) described an ethnographic study conducted as part of the Optimal Learning Environment (OLE) project, which aims to describe effective instructional contexts for bilingual students who have been identified as having general language difficulties. Students’ language and literacy skills were observed over a period of 20 months and compared across different classroom events that
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Assessment in context Table 9.4 Contextual features of classroom events associated with the upper and lower ranges of children’s language and literacy abilities. Upper range
Lower range
Emphasis on communication, not language forms Topic choice Increased student initiations Student-directed discourse Functional use of language Whole texts Centred on students’ experiences and knowledge
Syntactic and lexical constraints Topic constraints Few student initiations Teacher-directed discourse Language use for teacher evaluation Fragments of texts Centred on prepackaged curricular materials
Source: Ruiz (1995).
ranged from teacher-structured formal class sessions to peer-structured sociodramatic play. Particular contextual factors were found to be associated with enhanced student performance while others were associated with communicative breakdowns and problems with literacy tasks. These are shown in Table 9.4. Ruiz and Figueroa (1995) reported that at the start of the project teachers tended to see the source of students’ academic difficulties as the result primarily of internal processing deficits, whereas towards the end of the study they appreciated the important role of the instructional context in producing effective or ineffective behaviour. Thick ethnographic description of this kind that includes detailed and extensive observation has an important limitation – the considerable time required for both data collection and analysis. Also, as Rivera and Tharp (2004) point out, the approaches advocated are rarely practical to implement ‘live’ in classrooms. They ask: ‘Can these rich concepts be thinly assessed or is the field of soiocultural research doomed to expensive, impractical ways to measure its conceptual richness?’ (Rivera and Tharp 2004: 205–6). Drawing on activity theory, they present a framework, the Activity Setting Observation System (ASOS), which provides a ‘thin’ method of description that is: (a) based on the essential principles of sociocultural theory, (b) reliable across observers, (c) practical for the live and accurate description of a typical classroom or similar setting, (d) subject to meaningful quantification, and (e) eligible for simultaneous, more detailed, thicker annotation. (Rivera and Tharp 2004: 206) In this system the unit of analysis is the activity setting, which is defined by its product, whether tangible (an externally observable outcome or artefact that integrates a series of actions) or intangible (some achieved physical, psychological or social state that integrates a series of actions). For each activity setting observation of the the following features is prompted:
•
student initiative or choice in generating or joining the activity setting;
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•
joint productive activity or collaborative interaction that leads to a single product;
• • •
modelling or demonstration;
•
contextualization, which involves eliciting student knowledge from outside the classroom or school and actively incorporating it into the activity setting;
•
connectedness, which involves incorporation by the teacher into the activity setting of students’ previous classroom/school knowledge, experience or products.
teacher–student dialogue, involving at least two speech turns each; responsive assistance by teacher and students, which includes monitoring or informal testing of understanding and consequential adjustment or modulation of the assistance provided;
Soft systems methodology Reynolds (1995) reported that schools have been slow to implement the findings from school effectiveness research, while Gallimore (1996: 234) suggested that there may be important cultural forces operating to maintain the status quo: Lots of colleagues tell me that they’ve tried again and again to present to teachers research findings that could improve classroom practice. Many are frustrated that teachers do not share their enthusiasm. Even if told that other schools successfully tried new research-based practices, teachers may still reject what’s offered. ‘It’s different at our school,’ they’ll say. ‘Maybe it worked at those other schools, but your findings are not relevant to our situation, in our school, with our students.’ This insistence on the distinctiveness of the local situation is a tip off that cultural processes are at work. The local routine of classroom activities and how they are perceived are taken for granted as reality itself. They are the way things are, the way they are supposed to be. They are not recognised as evolved adaptations to the challenges of teaching at a particular school . . . If pressed, teachers defend them as unique, essential, and rational. Otherwise, they are so taken for granted they are seldom noticed and almost never examined. Asking that they be given up raises questions in the minds of teachers about the researcher’s grasp on reality. Frederickson (1993) argued that many problematic situations and issues in education are characterized by substantive differences in the perceptions and intentions of those involved. In these cases it is not possible to embark on a classical problem-solving approach because it is not possible to agree on a definition of the problem or achieve consensus on the objectives of any change. In such situations there is a need for an explicit approach which can represent the range of views held without requiring that they be reconciled in order for progress to be made. ‘Soft systems methodology’ (SSM) is a systematic approach which can be used to guide intervention in the kinds of ill-structured real-world problem situations common in the field of special needs. It aims to bring logical analysis to bear without oversimplifying the real complexities of the situations studied
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Assessment in context or underestimating the impact of human perceptions and interests in effecting or resisting change. SSM was developed through a programme of over 100 action research consultancies in commercial and service environments, including health and social service contexts (Checkland 1981; Checkland and Scholes 1990). It does not focus on the problem but on the situation in which there is perceived to be a problem – or an opportunity for improvement. The initial task is not to converge on a definition of a problem to solve, but to build up the richest possible picture of the situation in question, drawing on the disparate perceptions of those involved. The essential nature of SSM is summarized in Figure 9.7. In overview, it consists of some stages which involve finding out about and developing a representation of reality, some stages which involve developing one or more models of systems which might be relevant to changing/improving reality and, finally, some stages where comparisons are drawn between the model(s) and the representation of reality in order to generate improvement suggestions/recommendations for action. For descriptive purposes SSM consists of the seven stages which are represented diagrammatically in Figure 9.8. Stages 1 and 2 involve finding out about a particular problem situation, collecting information and identifying important themes and issues. Information may be collected by a number of different means (e.g. interviewing, observation). These are practical activities where something is done in the real world. In Stages 3 and 4 aspects of systems theory are used to analyse the problem situation and to build models of systems which may be relevant to improving it. Notice the words used. A model relevant to improving a problem situation does not purport to be a model of a problem or a problem situation. These activities are purely logical/theoretical. The defining characteristics of systems theories are explained in Chapter 15, while detailed discussion of different strands of systems theory and their application in schools can be found in Frederickson (1990a). At Stages 5 to 7 possible changes to the real-world situation are suggested so that those directly involved can debate the desirability and feasibility of the suggestions and, if appropriate, implement them. (The last three stages again involve practical activities, such as meetings and feasibility studies which would need to be carried out in the real world.) Note the distinction which is drawn between Stages 3 and 4, the ‘below the line’ stages, and the other five stages, the ‘above the line’ stages. Stages 3 and 4 are theoretical in that they involve formal systems thinking, whereas the other five
Figure 9.7
The essential nature of SSM
Source: Checkland (1986).
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Figure 9.8
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The conventional seven-stage model of SSM
Source: Adapted from Checkland and Scholes (1990).
stages are practical in that they involve activities which are carried out in the real world. The information collected in Stage 1 is used in Stage 2 to express, represent or describe the problem situation – to build up the richest possible picture of the situation. This may be a ‘pen picture’, but it is often found to be more useful to express the information diagrammatically or indeed pictorially. A rich picture is defined as an evolving diagram that collects together and portrays key information and impressions about a complex situation in a loosely structured and evocative way. Figure 9.9 contains an example of a rich picture which was used by educational psychologists supporting a primary school in special measures, to collate and feed back information from staff interviews (Bettle et al. 2001). Figure 9.10, on the other hand, contains an example of a rich picture developed by a project group of secondary school staff working with two educational psychologists to consider how the needs of the large number of demanding pupils in the school could be addressed while ensuring that the rights of the majority of ‘undemanding’ pupils were also respected. This kind of picture can helpfully highlight particular features of the environment under consideration and these can be selected as problem themes. Such a picture is also usually capable of being viewed from a variety of different perspectives. At Stage 3, consideration of these different viewpoints and problem themes can help identify systems likely to be relevant to the debate about the
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Figure 9.9 measures
Rich picture used by educational psychologists working with a primary school in special
Source: Bettle et al. (2001).
problem situation, with a view to bringing about improvement. For example, consider the following notional systems which proved relevant to the resolution of a particular parent–school conflict over the school’s homework requirements. The viewpoint which suggested each of these systems as potentially relevant is noted in parentheses:
• • •
A system to consolidate pupil learning (teachers).
•
A parent undermining system (objecting parent).
A system to enhance the school’s academic reputation (headteacher). A system to cover exam coursework which is not covered in class because the teachers cannot keep order (pupil).
In naming possible relevant systems there is no attempt to imply that any of these different perspectives is right or more accurate. In SSM a system is a hypothetical construct which is used to think about some real-world activity from a particular perspective (such as the four perspectives listed above). The purpose in naming relevant systems is to attempt to find some potentially useful or insightful ways of viewing the problem situation.
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Activity 9.4
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A rich picture
Choose a learning environment familiar to you where you feel there are problems or opportunities for improvement. Write a description of the situation that identifies key issues within it (maximum length: one side of A4). Now draw a rich picture to represent what you know about the situation and to capture key issues from your point of view. Can you identify any differences between writing and drawing in:
• • • •
The clarity, accuracy and completeness of the representation produced?
• • •
Sequences of events or changes over time?
•
The ease with which colleagues can pick up key issues from the description/picture?
The amount of time taken to produce it? The sensitivity of the matters that can be represented? The number of different issues and their interrelationships that can be represented simultaneously?
The sorts of issues that emerge? Your willingness to share your representation of the learning environment in question with a colleague?
(You might like to check out with a colleague your ideas about this.)
•
Your willingness to share the representation with key staff in the learning environment in question?
Having identified a number of relevant systems, some can be selected for further development. This selection is made on the basis of subjective judgement and experience. An element of trial and error is involved and the first attempt at analysis may fail to yield a useful outcome. It will usually be necessary to cycle through Stages 3, 4 and 5 a number of times in order to identify changes that are likely to bring about improvements in the problem situation. The rest of Stages 3 and 4 will involve the logical development of the relevant systems that have been selected. The relevant systems are first defined more clearly. This is done through producing a root definition of each, which describes its basic nature in a way designed to be revealing to those in the situation. The value of root definitions is not judged in terms of their correctness, but in terms of their usefulness in illuminating ways in which aspects of the problem situation can be helpfully changed. In order to provide a clear definition of what the system under consideration is, the root definition should contain the following six elements: C
Customers (victims or beneficiaries of the system)
A
Actors (who carry out the activities of the system)
T
Transformation process (what the system does to its inputs to to turn them into outputs)
W
Weltanschauung (the view of the world that makes this system meaningful)
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Figure 9.10
O E
Rich picture developed by a project group of secondary school staff
Owner (who could abolish this system) Environmental constraints (what in the environment this system takes as given).
Here is an illustration taken from Frederickson (1990b). One of the relevant systems selected on the basis of the rich picture shown in Figure 9.10 was: ‘A system to provide effective access to the curriculum through support teaching in the school’. The CATWOE analysis which was selected was as follows:
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C
All pupils
A
Support teachers and subject teachers
T
Need for effective access to the curriculum – that need met through support teaching ‘It’s a good thing to maintain pupils with special needs in the mainstream, but important to ensure that the education of other pupils does not suffer’ Headteacher
W O E
School staffing levels, large proportion of pupils with special needs in a secondary modern school, attitudes of some staff, skills of some support teachers.
The corresponding root definition (Root Definition 1) was: ‘A headteacher-owned system, staffed by support teachers and subject teachers which provides for all pupils that support deemed necessary to enable them to gain effective access to the curriculum despite the presence of a large proportion of pupils with special needs in the class and the constraints of current staffing levels, attitudes and skills’. No root definition can claim to be objective. Rather, each is written from a particular viewpoint, which is largely reflected in the ‘W’ selected. However, there are other components of the root definition on which opinions may differ. In this case there was much debate as to who should be considered to be the customer of the system – other candidates for the role being ‘special needs pupils’ and ‘the subject teachers’. The root definition describes what the system is. In order to describe what it does it is necessary to build an activity model of the system. This model will be conceptual in that you must strive to make it a purely logical representation of the activities which would necessarily have to happen in the system described by the root definition. No attempt should be made either to model what really happens or what might ideally happen. Your model is only a relevant intellectual construct to be used to help structure debate. In work at this stage, comments are often made about the advantages of involving an ‘outsider’ whose greater distance from the real-world situation helps to retain an appropriate focus on the logical and conceptual nature of the model building. The crucial components of the model will be activities, represented on paper as verbs. The task is to assemble in a logical order the minimum number of activities required to operate the human activity system described by the root definition. The conceptual model shown in Figure 9.11 was developed from the root definition of the system to ‘provide effective access to the curriculum through support teaching in the school’ which was described above. In considering the issue of evaluation, Checkland argues that five different aspects need to be considered: efficacy, efficiency, effectiveness, ethicality and elegance (Checkland and Scholes 1990). In evaluating efficacy one needs to ask whether the system is in fact functioning, whether the transformation is being carried out, whether the means selected actually work. In evaluating efficiency one needs to ask whether the system is operating with minimum resources, including time. The evaluation of effectiveness involves asking whether the transformation at the heart of the system is the right activity to be doing in the first place. You should notice that questions about effectiveness can only be answered from outside the system in question, by reference to larger systems of which it is a part.
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Figure 9.11 Conceptual model of a system to provide effective access to the curriculum through support teaching
Considerations of ethicality require us to consider whether the transformation is a moral thing to do, while the evaluation of elegance would focus on the extent to which the transformation is parsimonious and apt. At Stage 5 the conceptual models which have been produced during Stage 4 are compared with the real world (the problem situations expressed in Stage 2). This comparison may reveal mismatches:
•
Are some logically necessary stages simply left out of the process which operates in real life?
•
Is operational effectiveness being reduced by the inclusion of unnecessary stages?
• •
Are activities happening in an illogical order? Are the activities being performed well?
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In the above example the way in which support teaching was being provided differed radically from the conceptual model of the activity. The most obvious difference was the sequencing of stages. The conceptual model shown in Figure 9.11 indicated that prioritization of sessions for support should precede the deployment of staff, so ensuring that top priority sessions were effectively supported. In reality, however, support teaching had been described as ‘what is left over when the timetable has been done’. Whatever their assessed need for support, sessions could only be allocated a support teacher if a teacher able and willing to provide support happened to be free at that time. The identification of mismatches at Stage 5 is used at Stage 6 to structure a debate among those who inhabit the problem situation about possible changes which could improve the situation. The debate aims to identify changes which meet two criteria: they must be systemically desirable, as indicated by the outcome of the conceptual modelling activity; and they must be culturally feasible, given the characteristics of the situation and the people in it. As a result of the debate about support teaching a new approach to planning and prioritization was introduced so that support teaching for the top priority periods was formally timetabled for the first time, thus ensuring that it would in future be provided where it was most needed. The formal timetabling of support teaching had a positive effect on its perceived status. This was in addition to the practical advantage that support teachers were no longer called away at short notice to cover for absent colleagues. That had sometimes happened when they had essentially been using a ‘free’ period to provide support teaching. The influence of cultural feasibility was seen in the decision for the SENCO to engage in a fairly time-consuming face-to-face process of liaison and consultation with department and year heads in identifying priority lessons for support. She could instead have drawn up a set of criteria and generated a list of prioritized sessions on this basis. Staff wished to avoid overtly listing criteria, as this would have involved formally recognizing, for example, that certain departments were more successful than others in supporting pupils with special needs, or that some staff had particularly poor classroom management skills. Such information was widely known informally, but it was felt to be culturally unacceptable to have it recorded formally. Stage 7 involves the implementation of the changes which have been agreed. This may be straightforward or it may generate other difficulties which can in turn be tackled using the methodology in further cycles. Although the methodology has been described in stage by stage sequence, in the interests of clarity of exposition, Checkland (Checkland and Schole 1990) emphasizes that much repetition of stages and flexible movement between them is expected and indeed desirable. For example, in selecting relevant systems at Stage 3 it may well be useful to test out various possibilities by quickly looking ahead to Stages 4, 5 and 6 and seeing what kind of models might follow from the root definitions considered and what kinds of changes are likely to be generated in the comparison stage. Also, at Stage 5, the attempt to make comparisons between the models that have been generated and the real world frequently highlights the need for more data gathering, where the information needed to make key comparisons is lacking. Checkland points out that the methodology should not be regarded as a onceand-for-all approach to something sharply defined as a problem, but as a general way of carrying out purposeful activity which gains from the power of some
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Assessment in context formal systems thinking and results in those involved ‘learning’ their way to the development of an improved situation. Hence the methodology deals with fuzzy real-world messes, whereas many alternative approaches require clearly defined problems/objectives. Such ‘hard’ approaches also typically produce ideal systems, modelled by experts, which are imposed on the situation and the people within it as solutions. Burden (1978), having applied the hard systems approach developed by Jenkins (1969) in a number of organizational-level projects in schools, questioned its appropriateness and suggested that a more flexible approach may be preferable. By contrast, SSM seeks to identify systemically desirable and culturally feasible changes to the existing situation, these changes having been selected by those who live in the situation. SSM has been applied to a wide range of issues in education. Examples include: supporting schools in special measures (Bettle et al. 2001), tackling high rates of exclusion (Miller 2003), inclusion of pupils who have special educational needs (Frederickson 1993), establishing a school-based SEN screening programme (Gersch et al. 2001), school lunch reform in the light of child obesity data (Suarez-Balcazar et al. 2007), strategic planning and quality assurance in schools (Kowszun 1992) and professional development in higher education (Patel 1995). Also of relevance in the light of the move to multi-disciplinary working in Children’s Trusts are the applications to complex multi-disciplinary working (Gibb et al. 2002), decision making (Cook et al. 2001) and professional education (Rushton and Lindsay, 2003) in health and social care contexts.
Conclusions The emphasis on assessing the learning environment has steadily grown in recent years. Research on school effectiveness and on features of the classroom environment that can facilitate learning has been influential. Legislation and guidance on the identification of SEN has increasingly incorporated a focus on the learning environment, alongside the traditional focus on the learner. There are a number of well-developed theoretical models of the influence of the classroom and/or school environment on student learning. However, practice with pupils who have SEN has lagged behind the theory and has tended to remain focused on the individual child. In this chapter it was argued that many education service professionals need to develop their knowledge about assessment and intervention approaches that more adequately reflect the importance of the learning environment. Current lack of knowledge may represent one of the most significant problems to be overcome if the gap between theory and practice is to be closed. There are implications also for team working, decision making and professional development in complex multi-disciplinary team contexts, where professionals working with children who have SEN will increasingly be located. Activity 9.5
A Classroom-level SSM case study
Figure 9.12 shows a rich picture that was drawn by the educational psychologist and SENCO shown in the top right-hand corner of the picture. They were concerned about the learning environment being provided for Alex, a 9-year-old child with a statement of SEN on account of his significant visual difficulties. Alex received additional provision of 10 hours per week from a visiting specialist
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Figure 9.12
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Rich picture of the learning environment being provided for Alex
teacher and had 20 hours per week from a learning support assistant. Alex only spent the first 40 minutes of each day in the class of which he was nominally a part. Once the visiting teacher for pupils with visual difficulties arrived at the school, Alex was withdrawn to an alcove in the corridor outside the classroom where he worked with her in the morning and with the non-teaching assistant in the afternoon. This arrangement was said to be necessary so that Alex would have easy access to an electrical socket into which to plug his Brailler. The two sockets in the classroom were ‘occupied’ by the computer and the television! In addition, the noise of the Brailler was considered by the class teacher to be too distracting for the other children in the class. Alex had joined the school at the start of the present school year, following a family move, and initially been placed in a parallel class. The teacher of this first class had been unhappy that Alex was notionally a part of her class but was withdrawn for so much of the school day. Four weeks into the first term, following
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a meeting between the visiting teacher and the acting head, Alex moved classes. Alex, who had been included almost full-time in the classroom in his previous school, feels very lonely and unhappy. His mother is upset by the change in him, as he used to be such a happy boy who loved going to school. Now he sometimes doesn’t want to go. She has always feared that as he got older it would be harder for him to stay in mainstream school and wonders whether it would be better for him to go to a special school where he could at least make some friends. (a) Make a note of any suggestions you have at this stage for ways in which the learning environment for Alex could be changed so that it meets his needs more fully. (b) Look at the rich picture and consider in turn the perspective of each of those involved in order to produce a list of systems that might be relevant to improving the learning environment for Alex. Among the relevant systems generated by the SENCO and the educational psychologist were:
•
a system to help Alex find his way around familiar environments without assistance;
•
a system to increase the time Alex spends in class.
Figure 9.13 class
A conceptual model of a system to increase the time Alex spends in
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The CATWOE analysis produced for the second of these was as follows: C
Alex
A
SENCO, class teacher, educational psychologist, learning support assistant
T
Alex in class very little > Alex in class 50 per cent of school day
W
Alex’s social and academic needs will be better met if he can spend time in the class
O
Acting headteacher
E
Noise of the Brailler? Availability of learning support assistant and other support time. Appropriateness of class lessons for Alex? Other needs specified on Alex’s statement (e.g. learning to use the Brailler fluently)
Figure 9.13 shows the conceptual model produced for this system. (c) Compare the conceptual model with the rich picture and make a note of any mismatches you can identify. Can you think of any systemically desirable changes whose cultural feasibility you would want to discuss with those involved? For example, have the use of other forms of recording in the classroom been considered? Could Alex use a pocket dictating machine some of the time? (d) Finally, compare the ideas you generated in (a) with those you generated in (c). What initial conclusions can you draw about the advantages and disadvantages of using SSM to structure thinking about the learning environments of pupils who have SEN? A number of methods for assessing learning environments and designing interventions were described and their applicability to pupils who have SEN were illustrated. While multi-perspective measures and those involving direct observation typically involve a substantial time commitment, pupil perception measures may take little more than an hour to administer and score. The time taken to implement qualitative ethnographic approaches or SSM will vary with the scope of the investigation. However, all of these approaches offer a potentially high return on the time invested as environmental changes may have a broader preventive impact and benefit other pupils with similar difficulties. Evaluation of attempts to change the learning environment can readily be carried out and corresponding changes in the achievement of different groups of pupils examined. In this respect the approaches introduced in this chapter are likely to have relevance to many more aspects of schools’ development plans than those relating specifically to pupils who have SEN.
PART THREE Areas of need
10 Language
Objectives When you have studied this chapter you should be able to:
• • • • •
describe the main areas of competence involved in language development for monolingual and bilingual speakers; recognize the possible impact of SEN on different aspects of language development; make decisions on when and how a full language assessment might be carried out with a child who has or may have SEN; analyse the implications for SEN of learning EAL; recognize and understand signs of specific language impairment that may be observed in the classroom.
Contents The knowledge and skills involved in language proficiency
• • •
Language and communication Language diversity Bilingual language proficiency
Assessment of language proficiency
• • • •
The importance of assessing language proficiency Investigating a child’s previous experience of language Approaches to language assessment Evaluating the language proficiency of children learning EAL
Problems that occur in the development of communication skills
• • •
Difficulties of language acquisition that develop in association with other disabilities Specific language impairment Problems of communication deriving from emotional and social difficulties
Conclusions
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Areas of need
The knowledge and skills involved in language proficiency Language and communication Language is central to human experience – a key vehicle for thought and for social contact. Human beings are mutually dependent. Effective communication between them requires that:
•
they know the forms of the language they share – how the words sound and how they go together (competence in phonology and syntax);
•
they are able to use those forms to convey meaning and can understand what others mean when they use them (competence in semantics);
•
they understand the social conventions that determine how people use language to each other, so that they appreciate another speaker’s intentions in speaking and can commun
